Battle: Actium
by Ian Otter
Summary: Before the Fall of Reach, the Battle of Actium was one of the bloodiest land battles of the Human-Covenant War. Experience the fighting through the eyes of those who fought, and died, in her defense. (Companion piece to my other story, Missing in Action) (Abandoned.)
1. Chapter 1

Hello, and welcome to the story!

So, after finishing _Missing in Action_ , I decided it would be fun to write out a "sort-of" sequel to it. I call it a sort-of sequel because this story is not intended to be a continuation of _Missing in Action_ , but a companion story. Whereas _MIA_ was focused more on a single unit's actions during the initial day of the Battle of Actium, with the battle being more of a backdrop, the focus of this story is on the battle itself. Because of this, the reading of _MIA_ is not required, nor do readers need to have read any of the official Halo stories or played any of the games, though several of my characters from that story will be making "cameo" appearances in this one, and the events that took place in _MIA_ will be referenced here as well, so to understand _those_ references, you might want to consider reading _MIA_.

What new readers do need to note, and as a reminder to returning readers, this story takes place in **2545** , **SEVEN YEARS BEFORE** the events of **_Halo: Combat Evolved_**. Also, the characters in this story are (almost) all **ORIGINAL CHARACTERS**.

Hope you guys enjoy!

* * *

 **Battle: Actium**

 **Chapter 1**

 **Camp Hoxha, 65 kilometers south of Byzas  
Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0600 (Two hours before contact)**

 **Private Marcus Olsen**

The bus rattled and shook as it hit a pothole, snapping Private Marcus Olsen out of his thoughts and causing him to bump shoulders into the soldier seated next to him. The man, whose biceps looked about as big as Marcus's head glared at him and Marcus could almost swear his eyes were glowing.

Mumbling a quick apology, Marcus tried to scoot away as far as possible from the man, which, despite its simplicity, was a lot harder than it sounded as Marcus was sitting right next to the window. Still, the motion seemed to mollify the man and Marcus let out a sigh of relief as he turned away, allowing Marcus to return to his thoughts. He stared bleakly out the window, barely noticing the snow-covered landscape as it rolled by. He didn't want to be here. Plain and simple. He didn't want to be here, on this bus, in this dreary place, in the Army, headed towards his first duty station.

How did it all go wrong? He had plans. He was going to go to college in some tropical paradise where he would have been able to spend his weekends at the bar getting drunk and picking up chicks. On the weekdays, he would have been in class, studying to be a film producer where, upon graduation, he would have found a job that would have allowed him to travel the galaxy, producing films that would have won him fame and fortune. That's what he was supposed to do. That was his plan. At no point did he ever intend to join the Army.

And yet, here he was.

Marcus just didn't understand. By official accounts, while humanity wasn't winning the war against the Covenant, they were at least holding their own. Yet, the Security Council still decided to implement a draft a few years ago, to make up for what they were calling a "shortfall" in numbers. While recruitment quotas had been left for the individual colonies to decide, unfortunately, Marcus apparently lived on a very patriotic colony; Actium had responded by just about drafting every single boy and girl who had turned eighteen since then. There only seemed to be three reliable ways to avoid it: be the son or daughter of someone important, go to one of the military academies, or enlist in one of the colony's militias.

As the only son of a factory foreman and an accountant, the first method wasn't an option for him. He would have joined a military academy, except Marcus wasn't interested in devoting eight more years of his life to the military after he graduated. Which left the militias: the Provincial Militia and the Actium Colonial Militia.

If it were up to him, Marcus would have joined his local Provincial Militia. They had all the benefits: as a reserve unit, they only met once a month for drills, and only on the weekends at that, meaning Marcus could have devoted all his free time to doing whatever he wanted. Joining his local militia would have meant he would have been able to stay close to home, meaning he probably could have stayed with his parents. Finally, but most importantly, the Provincial Militia never got deployed off world, meaning unless Actium itself were to get attacked, Marcus would never have to worry about getting sent into combat. It would have been a win-win situation for him.

Except it seemed as though fate was conspiring against him. Less than two weeks before Marcus was going to sign the paperwork to enlist, the provincial governor had announced that, effective immediately, his local Provincial Militia was to be reduced in size by half, thus allowing for more people to be available to be drafted by the UNSC. Because of that, they were no longer taking new recruits, and Marcus was forced to quickly join the Actium Colonial Militia before he could get swept up by UNSC recruiters. But because of his haste, Marcus was forced to accept whatever they wanted him to do. Which meant despite his great displeasure, Marcus was assigned to the active duty side of the Colonial Militia and sent to this crappy place on the other side of the Euxine Ocean! If there was one consolation prize, it was that Marcus had at least managed to avoid being assigned a combat job. But then again, what he got wasn't that much better.

Marcus subtly glanced at the transfer orders he had in his hands. He had been assigned as an 88M - Motor Transport Operator, aka, a truck driver. It was the stupidest thing ever. Hadn't the Army ever heard of self-driving vehicles? Why exactly did they need someone like him to drive trucks around? Plus, it wasn't exactly the safe, cushy job Marcus had been hoping for. His time in AIT had shown that the Army expected even glorified truck drivers to get attacked every now and then, which gave Marcus a fair amount of consternation. Why couldn't he have been assigned to something safer, like a quartermaster or military intelligence or something like that? What exactly had he done to cause God to hate him so?

Marcus was jarred out of his thoughts when he felt the bus start to slow down. He looked up to see they had arrived at their destination. He watched through the window as the bus pulled up to the front gate before coming to a complete stop.

 _"Camp Hoxha,"_ the bus chimed before, with a hiss of pneumatics, the doors opened.

All around him, Marcus's traveling companions for the last forty some minutes began to stretch and gather their things before climbing to their feet and walking towards the door. He watched through the window as they filtered out of the bus and headed towards the camp's gate before disappearing behind the camp walls. Marcus knew he should join them but for the moment, he just sat there, wondering what would happen if he just didn't leave the bus. There was no one here to make him get off; this bus, like all public transportation vehicles, was driven by the city superintendent, so no one could physically force him off. Eventually, the AI's programming would force the bus to return to its regular route, even if Marcus was still sitting there. He could sit there and wait as the bus returned to the airport, then buy a one-way ticket back home and forget about this Army business. He would probably get court-martialed for going AWOL, but honestly, would that really be all that bad?

Marcus snorted. Of course it would. Not only would a court-martial look really bad on his record and make things very difficult for him in the future, there was always public perception: on a colony like this where everyone had family or a friend in uniform, not only were deserters ostracized and shunned by society, so were their families. And while Marcus felt like he could handle being the colony's outcast, he didn't think his parents could. So, with a loud sigh, Marcus grabbed his duffle bag and reluctantly walked off the bus.

Shivering because of the cold, Marcus walked through the gates. He was the last one through. As soon as he cleared the path, there was a rattling of metal and he turned around in time to see the gate closing behind him.

Well, running was out of the question now.

Jogging to catch up with the rest of the group from the bus, Marcus quickly fell in line, hoping they knew where they were going. Camp Hoxha was a small base but in the dark, it looked really easy to get turned around, especially since all the buildings looked the same. Marcus dolefully plodded along the snow-covered sidewalks until the group reached one of the buildings and walked inside. He sighed in relief as the warm air washed over him.

Inside, there wasn't much to see. Just a couple of bored looking soldiers manning some reception counters. Marcus's group was already forming lines behind each desk, and Marcus hastily joined one of them. He noticed everyone was handing the soldiers manning the desk their transfer orders, and Marcus realized these two men were responsible for checking everybody in. It struck Marcus as a rather inefficient system; surely it would be faster for an AI to conduct the check-in, rather than a couple of soldiers? But then again, this did fit Marcus's experience with the Army so far. Even in BCT and AIT, Marcus had noticed the Army was rather traditional in the sense they always seemed to prefer to have humans do jobs that could really should have been allocated to AIs.

Marcus absentmindedly began fiddling with the strap to his duffle bag as he stood there, waiting. Now _this_ , this right here, really made Marcus feel like he was back in basic. Standing in line, just waiting for something to happen. It was amazing, really, just how boring the Army actually was. Marcus had figured the Army was going to be a lot of things but boring was never one of them. That's not to say he wanted it to be any other way, it's just that standing here waiting in this line, Marcus couldn't help but think about all the other things he'd rather be doing right now.

Finally, it was his turn.

"Next," the soldier at the desk called out.

Marcus marched over to the desk. He dropped his duffle bag on the ground and, just because he didn't know what else to do, snapped to attention. The soldier at the desk didn't even look up.

"Transfer orders?"

Marcus handed them over.

"Name, rank, service number?" the soldier asked as he took Marcus's orders.

"Olsen, Marcus T. I'm an E-1," Marcus reported, and noticed the soldier appeared to be double checking the information Marcus was providing to the information displayed on his transfer orders. "Service number is 87662, 12457, O, M."

"What's your MOS?"

"88M."

The soldier grunted in acknowledgement before falling silent. Marcus waited a bit impatiently as the soldier began typing in all the information Marcus had provided him into a data pad before opening another page. The soldier then abruptly picked up a phone.

"Good morning First Sergeant Rivera, this is Private Orlović over here at battalion reception," the man said into the receiver. "I have a new 88 Mike who just arrived on base this morning. Do you think your battalion could use him?"

"Hooah First Sergeant," Orlović said after a couple of minutes. "Are you going to send someone over to pick him up? Okay, roger, I'll have him wait. Thank you."

Orlović hung up the phone. Turning to his data pad, he quickly typed in something before glancing at Marcus, who automatically straightened.

"You're getting assigned to the 325th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion," Marcus was informed. "Someone is coming to pick you up. Go down the hall and go wait in the waiting room until they arrive."

Marcus sighed. More waiting. "Thanks, I guess," he said.

"Yeah bro," Orlović replied as he handed Marcus back his transfer orders. "No problem. Next!"

Marcus grabbed his orders in one hand and his duffle bag in the other before heading in the direction the man indicated. He plopped himself into one of the available seats before pulling out his transfer orders. They had been updated. Originally, all they said that he was getting transferred to Camp Hoxha in the Thracia Province. It still read that, but now it also stated that he was getting assigned to the 325th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, of the 197th Sustainment Brigade.

Marcus re-read that last part. Combat Sustainment Support. Hm. He wasn't too sure what that meant, honestly, but the fact that the word "combat" was part of his battalion's name wasn't exactly encouraging. Combat was the last thing he wanted to see. He could only hope and pray that the name was just that, a name, and wasn't indicative of the roles he could expect to see.

Cold air blew through the room as someone walked into the building. Marcus looked up to see a soldier, wearing the three chevrons of an Army sergeant, enter the room.

"Morning everyone. I'm looking for," he glanced at a data pad in his hands, "Olsen, Marcus T.?"

Marcus' head snapped up and he raised his hand. "That's me sir."

The man walked over to Marcus.

"Sergeant Theodore Dresden," he declared. "Guess I'm your new squad leader."

Marcus immediate leapt to his feet and snapped to attention. "Private Marcus Olsen, reporting as ordered, sir!" he barked like he'd been taught during basic.

Dresden chuckled. "Relax Private. No need to shout. We're Colonial Militia, not the goddamn Special Forces. Come on, grab your stuff. Let's get you over to the dorms, get you settled in."

Marcus hastily stuffed his orders into his pockets and grabbed his duffle bag, slinging it over his shoulder as he followed Dresden outside. Sitting outside was a small four seater golf cart. Gesturing for Marcus to sit in the front passenger seat, Dresden hopped into the driver's and took off.

"So Olsen, Marcus T., how you doing?" Dresden began conversationally. "What's your story, what's your background? You from around here?"

Marcus shook his head. "No sir, not around here. I'm from overseas. Levant. City of Astoria in the Aquincum Province."

"Astoria, huh?" Dresden commended. "Never been there personally, but I heard it's a nice place. You like it?"

"Well, I grew up there sir," Marcus awkwardly commented.

Dresden laughed. "Okay, fair enough. Well, I was going to ask where you transferred from, but I think I can guess: you straight out of AIT?"

"Yes sir," Marcus answered, surprised. "How did you know?"

"You keep calling me 'sir.' Drill sergeants make you call them 'sir' or 'ma'am' but out here in the real world, only commissioned officers and warrant officers are supposed to get called that."

Dresden pulled the cart to the side and stopped in front of one of the buildings.

"Now, I don't give a shit what you call me," Dresden cheerfully continued as he climbed out of the cart. "Like I said, we're Colonial Militia, and combat service support at that. Call me Sarge, Sergeant, or Dresden. Hell, you can call me Theo if you like. Whatever you want. We try to keep a chillaxed atmosphere around here. But, do be careful who you call 'sir.' Some people kind of take that personally."

"Yes sir!" Marcus automatically barked out, then froze. "Uh, I mean, Sergeant. Theo. Sorry."

Dresden laughed. "Don't worry about it dude. Seriously, relax. You don't need to get so worked up." He jerked his head in the direction of the building. "Come on. Let's get you set up in your room."

He turned and headed for the door. As Marcus followed in his wake, he couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief. If Dresden was anything to go by, then this entire Army thing might not turn out to be as bad as it seemed.

He might actually enjoy this.

 **XXXXX**

 **Byzas, Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0620 (One hour and forty minutes before contact)**

 **Officer Selene Riddle**

The window rattled and shook as her passenger kicked at its base.

"Hay! Youcant kep me her!" he slurred. "Doya now who Iam?"

Officer Selene Riddle ignored him and instead continued to fill out the paperwork for her most recent arrest. One Joshua Shin, arrested for disorderly conduct, public indecency, assaulting a police officer, and resisting arrest. In other words, it was just another Tuesday morning for her.

"Hay, biatch! Ima talking to you!"

"Shut up," Selene ordered without even looking up. "Give it a rest already."

"Yous cant 'rest me," he continued to slur. "I didn't do nothing!"

"Dude, you got kicked out of a bar for trying to pick a fight. When I arrived, I found you pissing in the middle of the street without any pants on, holding up traffic. When I was putting cuffs on you, you pushed me then tried to run, but you didn't get far because your drunk ass tripped over your own feet. I wouldn't exactly call that 'nothing,'" Selene dryly explained.

Her prisoner fell silent and for a moment, Selene wondered if he was finally going to shut up. But her hopes were quickly dashed.

"Fuck you," he mumbled. "You knows whos I is?"

Selene sighed. "No, and I don't really give a shit either," she bluntly stated.

"Ima Staff Surgent... Sarnet... Sergeant... in the UNSC Air Force!" he said.

"Of course you are."

"I ams," he insisted.

"And I believe you," Selene explained. "I just don't care. Do you know how many soldiers I've arrested in the last sixteen hours alone?"

"Not a soldier," he mumbled. "Airman."

"Soldier, airman, what's the difference? You're all in the military," Selene distractedly replied.

"Armee have solders. Air Force got Airmans," came the response. "Big difference."

"If you say so."

"It is," her prisoner insisted.

"Again: I believe you, I just don't _care_."

Her prisoner fell silent and Selene gratefully punched in the finishing touches to her report, enjoying the silence. Unfortunately, it wasn't to last.

"Pussy."

Selene paused. "What?"

"You. Pussy."

"Okay..." Selene dragged out. "Do I want to know why?"

Her prisoner bobbed his head. "You didn't have what it took to join the military," he stated in a surprisingly sober-sounding voice. "So you arrest _real_ warriors for no reason out of revenge. Pussy."

Selene stared at him. Then burst out laughing.

"Whatever you say dude," she told him.

"You're a coward," her prisoner told her.

"Uh huh. Sure."

"You are," he insisted. "You're a spineless, yellow belly, traitorous coward."

For some reason, something about the way he said that last part caused a wave of anger to surge through her.

"Okay," she told him in a serious tone, "it's time for you to shut up now."

Her prisoner grinned. "Oh, you didn't like that? Too bad. Traitor."

Selene pulled out her sidearm. "If you don't shut up, I'm going to shoot you with this," she warned him.

The man took one look at the device in her hand, then burst out laughing. "That little peashooter? You call that a gun?" he said between laughs.

"No, I don't, because it's not a gun. This here is an XT-47 cartridge driven stun pistol, capable of delivering up to 1,000,000 volts of electricity with each shot," Selene explained. "According to my firearms instructors, if I were to hit you with that much electricity, it could cause respiratory failure, organ malfunction, internal burns, cardiac arrest, and loss of bowel and bladder control(2). Now, I've never actually seen that happen before but then again, admittedly, I've never fired it at full charge. You think we should try it now, see if my instructors were bullshitting me?"

Selene could see him eyeing the pistol, then her face, before steeling himself.

"You ain't got the balls," he challenged. "Do it, bitch. I can take it."

Selene flicked the safety off and was just about to roll down the privacy screen when she suddenly remembered she couldn't afford to get written up again for "use of excess force against a restrained prisoner." She sighed, then engaged the safety and holstered her weapon.

"Ha!" her prisoner started to say but before he could get another word in, Selene barked out a single command, "Super, _mute_."

The privacy screen sealed, preventing all noise from coming through. Through the window, Selene watched as her prisoner mouth several more words before he abruptly realized she couldn't hear him. An almost comical look of outrage passed over his face as he tried to figure out what to do next. Then, unexpectedly, he began licking the window.

"Oh, great!" Selene exclaimed, disgusted. "Now I'm going to have to disinfect that!" She sighed. That was a problem for later. For now though, "Super, opaque."

The privacy screen turned black. Technically, she wasn't supposed to engage those privacy settings when she was transporting a prisoner, just in case there was an emergency, but screw it. The city Superintendent, a constant presence in all government vehicles, would be monitoring his vitals and would alert her if he started dying. She picked up her radio.

"Dispatch, Delta-6 0. Show me as to 10-76 to station, over."

 _"Copy that Delta-6 0."_

Selene tossed the radio aside. "Super, take me back to the station. And give me the wheel."

 _"Officer Riddle, regulations state the city Superintendent is to drive the vehicle unless in an emergency situation,"_ Super automatically droned.

"I know what the regulations say," Selene snapped. "I don't care, I'm overriding. I need something to distract me."

 _"Acknowledge."_

A panel opened in front of her and a steering wheel emerged from the opening. Checking her windows, Selene pulled out onto the street and headed back towards the station.

As she drove, she couldn't help but think back to what her prisoner had accused her of. It wasn't the first time she'd been accused of being a coward; just about every single soldier she had ever arrested in her ten year career had accused her of that at some point or another. Normally it wasn't that big of a deal but for some reason, it was really bugging her tonight.

Most people didn't understand why Selene had opted to become a police officer instead of joining the military like ninety-percent of her friends and classmates had done when they graduated from high school. And it wasn't like she couldn't have: based on some of the so-called soldiers she had encountered in the past, Selene knew the physical requirements wouldn't have been that much of an issue for her. And it wasn't a lack of motivation either. With the UNSC slowly but surely losing more and more ground to both the Insurgency and the Covenant, despite what the government claimed, it made perfect sense to join the military now, as more than ever, it was clear the UNSC needed all the help it could get. In fact, there was no greater evidence of that than her own precinct: within the two last years, half the police department had been let go and replaced by the city Superintendent just to help generate a larger pool of recruits. For a lot of people, her continued status as a Byzas City police officer was proof that she either had no spine or was a traitor for refusing to answer the call.

But like all things, the truth was more complicated than that.

Selene was six when she first heard the news. One of her classmates, a little girl named Suzie who no one really liked because she was so quiet, was being sexually molested by her father, a UNSC Navy veteran.

When she was eleven, her favorite teacher in the world, Mrs. Lisbon, disappeared. They found her body three days later, buried in a small ditch, just on the outskirts of the city. She had been murdered by her ex-wife, an active soldier in the UNSC Army, because they were getting divorced.

When Selene was sixteen, her first boyfriend ever, Charlie, committed suicide. It was later revealed he had committed suicide because he was getting beaten with a belt every night by his father, a Major in the Colonial Militia, while his mother, an active duty UNSC Marine, just stood by and watched.

Then there were the hundreds of soldiers Selene had personally arrested since she graduated from the police academy nearly ten years ago for all sorts of reasons, ranging from something small like speeding, to more serious crimes like arson. Rape. Homicide.

Selene tried not to generalize. She had her biases, there was no denying it, but she tried not to judge an entire group of people based on the actions of one or two people. Every group had their bad apples; hell, she knew that better than most, being a police officer.

But if there was one thing all these incidents had taught her, it was this: soldiers were _human_.

Despite the hero-worshiping of all things military, especially on this colony, soldiers weren't perfect. They were emotional. They made mistakes. And every now and then, they committed some heinous crimes against their fellow humans.

There was no denying soldiers were needed. Especially now, with the Covenant closing in from all directions. And, there was no denying soldiers should be respected for being willing to stand up and face down the evils that tried to destroy humanity. But the question that always struck Selene was: if soldiers protected humanity from the monsters that came from beyond the stars, who protected humanity from the soldiers themselves? Sort of a "who watches the watchman" type of situation. And that was why she became a police officer. And why she continued to be one despite everything.

She took the next turn and pulled into her precinct's parking lot. Parking her patrol car over one of the available recharging pads so that it would be ready for tomorrow, she climbed out of the driver's seat and walked to the back seat.

"Okay Mr. Do-You-Know-Who-I-Am, on your feet," she announced as she pulled open the back door, but then paused at the sight of her passenger sprawled across the length of the back seat. For a moment, she started to freak out. Did her prisoner somehow just keel over and die? Why didn't Super say anything?

Upon closer look though, Selene quickly realized her prisoner wasn't dead, he was just asleep. At that realization, Selene couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy: the one thing she wanted more than anything in the world right now was to take a nap, but she couldn't because she was still on duty. Meanwhile, this asshole had spent all night drinking and causing all sorts of trouble, yet somehow he was the one who got to take a nap in her car? That was so not fair.

"Alright, come on, get up!" she yelled, slapping the man's foot. "Wake up! You can sleep in the drunk tank!"

Her prisoner didn't respond, merely let out a loud snore as he rolled around.

Selene let out a loud, annoyed sigh.

"I don't have time for this," she muttered to herself.

"Fuck it," she said to no one in particular, before pulling out her sidearm and pressing it against the man's thigh.

By default, her sidearm had been set to its lowest power setting. Still, it was enough to shock her prisoner into consciousness.

"Yeow!" he yelped as he leapt upright, banging his head against the ceiling. Selene couldn't help herself: she burst out laughing.

"Come on, get up, got to put you through processing," she told him between laughs.

Mumbling darkly under his breath, her prisoner nevertheless allowed her to haul him to his feet, then lead him into the building.

As they stumbled down the hall towards the holding cells, they nearly walked right into Selene's lieutenant as he emerged from one of the nearby doorways.

"Whoa!" her lieutenant cried as he struggled to save his cup of coffee. "What the... oh, good morning Riddle."

"Morning Kingsley," Selene tiredly greeted as she steered her prisoner away from her lieutenant. "Sorry about that LT."

"Hey, no biggie," Kingsley said dismissively before staring at her curiously. "You're here bright and early, aren't you?"

"Bright and early?" Selene echoed. "I never left."

"What? How long you been on the clock?"

Selene cocked her head to activate her personal computer behind her left ear. "About sixteen hours."

Kingsley stared at her in shock. "Why would you do that?"

Selene blinked, dismissing her display. "Why? Dawlish told me it was all hands on deck last night and because of that, I would have to stay late."

"Really?" Kingsley commented with a raised eyebrow. "Because he clocked out about six hours ago."

White hot anger surge through her veins at those words, but then they disappeared as quickly as they had arrived. "Typical," Selene resignedly muttered. "Lazy asshole doesn't want to work, so he made me stay so he could go."

"Certainly sounds like it," her lieutenant agreed. "I'm going to have to have a talk with him; this is the third time he's done that this month." He suddenly jerked his head in Selene's prisoner's direction, who looked about ready to fall asleep standing up. "Where are you taking him, the drunk tank?"

"Yep."

"You do the paperwork on him yet?"

Selene shook her head. "No, I was just about to do that," she said with a tired sigh.

Kingsley regarded her for a few moments, before seemingly coming to a decision. "I'll tell you what Selene. I'll deal with this guy and the preliminary paperwork. You? You go home, get some rest, and don't even think about coming in for the next eight hours or so."

Selene felt a massive wave of relief pass through her. "LT, if you weren't married, I would kiss you right now."

Kingsley let out an appreciative laugh. "Thank you for being so concerned about my marriage," he said, before glancing at the steaming cup of coffee in his hands. "Here, I'll trade you. You look like you could use this more than I could."

"Lieutenant, I take back every bad thing I ever said about you: you are now my favorite person in the world right now," Selene exclaimed as she all but grabbed the cup and took a large gulp out of it. The hot liquid burned her tongue, but at this point she was beyond caring.

Kingsley smiled as he removed her cuffs from the prisoner and handed them back to her. "Go home Selene," he repeated. "And give your cat a couple of treats for me."

"I definitely will! Thank you!" Selene called out as he walked away. She took another large gulp out of the cup and grinned. Wow. Today was turning out to be a good day, wasn't it?

 **XXXXX**

 **Town of Aquia, 11 kilometers east of Byzas  
Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0645 (One hour and fifteen minutes before contact)**

 **1st Lieutenant Link "Zelda" Kuang**

The table rattled and shook as his communicator violently vibrated.

Letting out a mute groan, 1st Lieutenant Link "Zelda" Kuang carefully extracted his arms from around the sleeping woman lying on his chest and reached out to silence it before the noise could wake her. Blindly slapping the desk, his fingers struck the ear piece, and he grabbed it and stuck it into his ear.

"-Lo?" he mumbled. Immediately, a holographic image of an irritated man appeared before his eyes.

 _"Jesus Christ Zelda, you're still in bed? Are you serious right now?"_ the man barked.

"And a good morning to you too, Mister Lieutenant Vincent 'Odessa' Lords," Zelda sarcastically replied with a yawn. "And how are you today on this fine Tuesday morning? Doing well I hope?"

 _"Enough with the jokes,"_ Odessa snapped. _"You were supposed to be here ten minutes ago. Pax is going to kill you, and I might just help her."_

Zelda shrugged. "Well," he began, "'Bellum' just needs to get that stick out of her ass. What's the big rush anyways? It's not like we're doing anything important today."

 _"Not impor-!? We're on Quick Reaction Alert status today!"_

"Oh is that today?" Zelda said, sitting up. "I thought that was tomorrow."

 _"No Zelda, that is_ **today** _. So get your ass in,_ _ **right fucking now**_ _!"_

"Alright, don't get your panties in a twist," Zelda said as he eased out from underneath his bed sheets. "I'll be there in ten."

 _"Make it five,"_ Odessa ordered.

"Roger that Milord, five minutes it is," Zelda said with a wink.

He saw Odessa shake his head before the image disappeared.

"Who was that?" Zelda heard someone ask and he glanced towards his bed to see his bedmate raising her arms above her head as she yawned.

"My wing mate," Zelda casually replied as he walked over to his closet to grab a flight suit to throw on. As he began digging through the closet for a clean pair, he tried to remember what her name was. It started with a 'J,' he remembered that much. Jennifer? Or Julia? Maybe it was Jess. Hum. That sounded about right.

"Sounds like you're late," she commented, shivering as she wrapped the blanket around her naked body, much to Zelda's disappointment. He was hoping for a show as he got dressed. "Are you going to be alright?"

"Oh, I'll be fine," he reassured her with a bright smile. "My wing mate likes to be overly dramatic sometimes. I'll probably get a dress down, but that'll be the worst that happens."

Jess glanced at him, skepticism clearly written all over her beautiful face. "Are you sure? My brother is in the Air Force and I know he's told me if he ever showed up late to formation, they'd lock him up."

Zelda leaned across the bed and gave her a kiss. "I appreciate the concern beautiful," he told her as he broke away. "But believe me, I'll be fine. It's not like they're going to punish the best fighter pilot in the AO, you know?"

Jess still looked a bit skeptical, but she nodded in agreement. She leaned in for a kiss and while Zelda knew this would probably result in him being even more late, he nevertheless gave in to his desires and passionately kissed her. Without breaking lips, he instinctively reached out and began stripping the blanket from around her shoulders, and in return, he could feel her unzipping his flight suit. But just as things were about to get interesting, his communicator let out a loud angry _buzz_.

Zelda reluctantly broke away from Jess to see who it was. It was Odessa, of course. Zelda ignored it, but he knew he couldn't ignore him forever.

"I gotta go before he has a heart attack," Zelda said with a loud sigh, and Jess nodded, looking just as disappointed as Zelda felt. "You can stay here, if you'd like. I've got some... food? In the fridge? I think? Anyways, if you're still around when I get back, maybe we can resume our little session here?" he hopefully asked, wagging his eyebrows.

"As much as I would love to," Jess replied with obvious reluctance, "I need to report into the office today. Plus, I should call my friend and let her know you haven't, I don't know, murdered me or something."

"Hey, if she's so worried, maybe she should join us next time," Zelda slyly suggested.

Zelda felt his heart skip a beat when, instead of outright dismissing the suggestion, Jess actually looked intrigued. "That's something I'd have to ask her," was all she said.

"In that case, I can't wait to see you again," Zelda said smoothly.

Jess smirked. "I guess that's one way to get guys to call me back."

Zelda couldn't help but grin at that.

Slipping on a pair of boots, he headed for the door. Just before leaving, he glanced back at Jess.

"I'll see you later sexy."

She blew him a kiss.

Once the door was shut, Zelda finally allowed himself a triumphant pump of his fist.

He headed towards the elevator and rode it all the way down to the underground garage where he kept his motorcycle. It was admittedly too cold to be riding his bike, but if he was as late as Odessa seemed to think he was, then public transportation just wasn't going to cut it: he had a need for speed.

Hopping onto his motorcycle, Zelda did his best to coax out every ounce of horsepower from his vehicle. He had spent quite a lot of money making sure his bike had the best and fastest engine on the market; it was, after all, the only way for him to recreate the speed and agility of his beloved F-41A "Broadsword" fighter, short of actually being in one. Plus, the ladies seemed to love it, which was always a bonus.

That speed, coupled with his natural talent at flying, allowed him to make it to the gates of O'Neill Air Force Base in exactly seven minutes. Slowly down as he approached the front gate, he waited until the base security had scanned, and then cleared him for entrance before driving his bike directly to the fighter hangers. There was a parking lot designated for the air base personnel which is where he technically was supposed to park, but there was no way he was going to leave his baby out in the snow like that.

Stashing his bike near the mechanic's station, which he knew he would be able to get away with because the chief mechanic had a crush on him, Zelda began making his way towards the squadron briefing room, hoping he could sneak his way in without getting spotted by Pax. He had just put his hand on the door knob when:

"Lieutenant Kuang!"

Zelda grimaced and turned around. Walking towards him was his squadron commander, Captain Katerine "Bellum" Pax, with a rather annoyed look on her face. Following behind her was Odessa, looking highly amused.

Quickly adopting an air of innocence, Zelda lifted his hand in greeting, as if he hadn't been trying to avoid them.

"Good morning Bellum!" he greeted as brightly as he could. "Has anyone told you, you look absolutely stunning today? New hair style?"

"It's been like that for over a week now," Bellum dryly informed him. "You're just noticing now?"

"No, of course not!" Zelda said smoothly. "I just haven't had the chance to fully appreciate it, what with us being so _busy_ and all."

"Uh huh," Bellum said, clearly not buying it. "You're in an oddly cheerful mood today."

Zelda brightened. "You know, it's funny you should say that because I actually had an excellent -"

Bellum held up her hand. "Let me just stop you right there: that? That was me just making a comment: I didn't come over here to listen to your life's story. No, the reason why I called you over is because of this." She thrusted a data pad into his hands. "Your after-action report from yesterday is incomplete. We need to go prep our Broadswords, but after we're done, I want it finished and on my desk by the next hour. That understood Zelda?"

"Your wish is my command!" Zelda announced flirtatiously.

Bellum snorted, then walked away and Zelda let out a mute sigh of relief. For whatever reason, it looked as if Bellum wasn't going to ream him out for being late. Thank the gods.

"Oh, and Zelda? One last thing."

"Son of a bitch!" Zelda swore under his breath. He knew he shouldn't have said anything. Damnation.

Bellum raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"Uh, I mean," Zelda trailed off as he casted around the room, looking for some excuse for him to have cursed like that. He couldn't find anything, and his ability to bullshit was getting compromised by the fact that Odessa looked like he was on the verge of bursting out laughing. "What I meant by that was, uh, 'Son of a bitch! I left my coffee on my dining room table!'"

"You don't drink coffee," Bellum pointed out.

"I just started?" Zelda said. "I mean... I just started."

"Oh, is that why you're on time for once?" Bellum noted. "I was about to say, will this become a daily occurrence from now on?"

Zelda didn't respond because at that point, he had stopped listening and was instead staring at Odessa in astonishment. Unfortunately, Bellum seemed to take that as a negative and let out a sigh. "Yeah, I didn't think so. Well, of all the days you needed to be on time, today would have been it. If you were late, I would have… well, I don't know what I would have done, but I guarantee it wouldn't have been pretty."

With that, Bellum walked away, leaving Zelda gaping at Odessa.

"You told me I was late," Zelda accused as soon as Bellum was out of earshot.

Odessa shrugged, unapologetically. "And if I hadn't, you would have been."

"You conniving son of a bitch," Zelda said with a shake of his head. "You know I had a chick over last night, right? I could have stayed in bed with her a bit longer if not for you!"

"Any woman who could be convinced to spend the night with you, is probably not a woman worth knowing for very long," Odessa casually noted. "Almost seems like I did you a favor: saved you from not only getting reamed by Pax, but also from having to pay future child support."

"Child support? Pft. What, you think I'm dumb enough to get some chick pregnant?"

"I think you think more with your dick than you do with your brain," Odessa dryly noted. "I think if a woman stripped naked in front of you, you'd jump straight into it, without even bothering to stop and put on a condom or make sure she was on the pill or something."

Zelda opened his mouth to protest, but then stopped as he remembered that was exactly what had happened last night, so he tried a different tactic. "Hey, my instincts are what made me into the best fighter pilot in this entire Air Group."

Odessa raised an eyebrow. "Best fighter pilot? I'm sorry, but who won our last matchup? And the one before that? It certainly wasn't someone named Link."

Zelda growled at the reminder. That loss had been a hard pill to swallow. "I had a bad wing mate and you know it."

"True," Odessa conceded. "But as someone once told me: 'a win is a win. Everything else is just excuses.'"

"What sort of dumbass said that?"

"You did."

That stopped Zelda short. "Must have said that before I started losing," he muttered to himself. "Fine then. You and me, one on one. No wing mates, no handicaps, nothing. Just a duel between two gentlemen. Let's do it."

"As much as I'd like to show you some real flying, you know we can't. Not today. We're on Quick Reaction Alert duty. And you know what that means," Odessa pointed out.

Zelda let out a sigh of annoyance. Quick Reaction Alert, or QRA, was a duty all fighter squadrons had to conduct at least once a month for a full day. It involved maintaining a state of high alert readiness where an entire squadron would be able to launch their fighters in a few moments notice.

Basically, due to security reasons and cost, fighter jets were never stored in their hangers fully fueled and fully armed, ready to go. Because of that, it could take upwards of twenty to thirty minutes to actually get a fighter jet into the air and ready for a fight. Obviously in an emergency, twenty to thirty minutes could result in a minor incident turning into a major disaster. QRA allowed the Air Force to have _some_ units ready to respond to the incident while the rest of the fighter group got ready as necessary.

Unfortunately for Zelda, that meant an entire day where he was literally doing nothing but sitting around waiting for _something_ to happen. He couldn't leave the hanger, he couldn't go out for a run, and he couldn't even go use the nicer bathrooms over at the control tower. All he could do was sit there and wait. The only saving grace was that the base was at DEFCON 3, meaning he didn't have to be physically inside the cockpit of his Broadsword, sitting on the tarmac, waiting to launch. He could at least hang out in the hangar where he had room to stretch. Who knew? Maybe he would take a nap. God knew he didn't get much sleep last night, for obvious reasons.

"ODESSA! ZELDA!" Bellum suddenly yelled, causing Zelda to jump. "Ladies, you have plenty of time to flirt later! Pre-flight checks! Let's go!"

Zelda let out a sigh before heading towards his Broadsword. This was going to be a long and boring day.

 **XXXXX**

 **Graham Quarry, 57 kilometers southwest of Byzas  
Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0700 (One hour before contact)**

 **Sergeant Tariq Helmand**

The wrench rattled and shook as Sergeant Tariq Helmand pulled it towards him, then pushed it away, trying his best to work loose the damn bolt.

"Come on you fucking bitch," Tariq angrily spat out under his breath. "Work with me here!"

Taking a deep breath, Tariq yanked on the handle, only for the wrench to abruptly slip off the bolt, sending him stumbling backwards and into the snow.

" **FUCK**!" Tariq yelled, then slammed the wrench against the track, his temper getting the better of him.

"Um, Sergeant? Are you sure you don't need my help?"

Tariq whirled on the speaker. It was his driver, one of the new guys straight out of tanker AIT who had been assigned to the unit a few weeks ago. Tariq didn't know his name, and didn't care to know his name. For the last few weeks, this FNG had been the bane of Tariq's existence.

"No, fuck you rookie!" Tariq snapped. "You're the fucking reason we're in this position in the first place! All you had to do was fucking follow in the tracks of the vehicle in front of you, but _noooo!_ That was just too hard, wasn't it? Now look at what you did to my home!" He gestured wildly at the M850 "Grizzly" tank sitting in the snow behind him. With her white camouflage and her recently rebarreled and re-sighted main cannons, "Lillian" should have been an impressive looking machine. Instead, she was looking rather pitiful, sitting in the snow with one of her tracks having been thrown. All because this asshole didn't want to listen. "You think I'm going to let you lay another finger on her!?"

To his annoyance, the FNG raised his hands and immediately backed down. Tariq had been hoping the idiot would give him a reason to get rid of him. Oh well. There was always next time.

Turning his attention back to the task at hand, Tariq put his hands on his waist and considered his problem. Replacing a track was a fairly straightforward process: all he had to do was break the track by removing the connectors, then back Lillian up, realign the track with the bogies, tighten the track shoes so they came together, then replace the connectors. It was... well, it wasn't exactly easy, but Tariq had done it enough times he probably could have done it in his sleep.

But first he had to get this _**GODDAMN**_ bolt off.

"Jeez, you're still trying to take that bolt out? How fucking long is this going to take? I'm freezing my balls off you know."

"Fuck you Chenko," Tariq snapped. "What do you care if your balls are freezing or not? It's not like you're using them."

Tariq looked up as Sergeant Chenko appeared from around the tank, chuckling in appreciation. "Well, I am strangely attached to them," he said somewhat sardonically.

Tariq snorted before falling silent. Perhaps sensing his mood, Chenko grew sober. "Seriously though. What's the problem?"

"Problem is, I'm trying to remove this damn bolt but it won't _fucking_ budge," Tariq snarled, his frustration rearing up again. "It's like, I don't know, frozen stuck or some shit like that."

"You try greasing it?" Chenko asked as he took a closer look at the bolt.

"Of course I did! What do you think I am, an idiot!?" Tariq snapped, then held up a finger in warning. "Don't say a fucking word."

"Wasn't going to," Chenko replied, though Tariq could tell he was lying through his teeth. "So, grease didn't work. You try hitting it with a hammer?"

Tariq rolled his eyes. "Ah, the good old infantry solution to everything: if there's a problem, just hit it with a hammer, right? That's a great solution, only, not every fucking problem is a nail you know!"

Chenko shrugged. "It sounds like a better solution to this problem than the tanker's idea, which apparently is to just stare at the problem and hope it goes away. You said the bolt feels frozen, right? Maybe it really is. If that's the case, hitting with a hammer would knock the ice off."

Tariq glared at him, not wanting to admit that actually made a lot of sense. "Aren't you our infantry support? Aren't you supposed to be watching the perimeter?"

"Now _that_... is an excellent question," a new voice suddenly interjected herself into the conversation.

"Ah shit," Tariq heard Chenko mutter and out of the corner of his eye, Tariq could see the rookie straighten, and if Tariq hadn't recognized the voice, that alone would have told him who was coming. Letting out a mute sigh, Tariq turned around to face the music.

Marching through the snow towards them was Tariq's first sergeant and tank commander, First Sergeant Octavia Noble. She had a pissed off look on her face which, by itself, wasn't all that unusual, however her stance and the deliberate way she was marching through the snow indicated just how irate she was.

"What is going on here?" she demanded to know as she came to a halt in front of the three men. "Sergeant Chenko! What are you doing here?"

"I came here to see what was taking the repairs so long First Sergeant!" Chenko bellowed but Noble was clearly not having it.

"Sergeant Chenko, are you a Grizzly mechanic?"

Tariq could see Chenko swallowing. "No First Sergeant."

"Are you a tracked vehicle mechanic?"

"No First Sergeant."

"Are you a mechanic of _any_ type?"

"No First Sergeant."

"What is your MOS?"

"I'm an 11 Mike(3) First Sergeant."

"And what exactly does that entail?"

"I'm a mechanized infantryman."

"Exactly." Noble leaned in until their noses were almost touching. "You're a Crunchie(4). Which means, you are here to support our tanks. Which means, when one of our tanks goes down, you cover us while we make repairs. Which means setting a perimeter." Noble tilted her head to the side. "Are you following me so far? Sergeant Perevernykruchenko?"

"Yes First Sergeant!"

"Good," Noble said with a satisfied nod. "Then I have one last question: **WHERE THE FUCK IS YOUR PERIMETER!? I JUST WALKED FROM THE BATTALION COMMAND VEHICLE ALL THE WAY HERE WITHOUT ONCE SEEING YOUR TROOPS! I HOPE THAT'S A PROBLEM FOR YOU SERGEANT, BECAUSE IT'S SURE AS HELL OF A PROBLEM FOR ME!"**

Tariq could see Chenko wincing. "I'll go check on it right away First Sergeant!" he promised.

Noble narrowing her eyes. "Then what are you still standing here for?"

It took about a second for Chenko to fully pick up on what she was saying, but he quickly spun around on one heel. As soon as his back was to her, he grimaced and Tariq could see him mouthing the words, "Good luck."

"Sergeant Helmand! Front and center!"

Letting out a mental sigh, Tariq marched forward until he was standing in the same spot Chenko had been moments ago. "Yes First Sergeant?"

He couldn't help but wince when Noble abruptly threw her arm around his shoulders and pulled him close, as if they were close buddies. "What exactly is your major malfunction Sergeant?"

"First Sergeant?" Tariq asked.

"What exactly is taking you so long with these repairs?" Noble elaborated. "This track, at the very least, should have been dismantled already."

"One of the connector bolts is stuck First Sergeant," Tariq automatically explained, then winced. Oh boy, Noble wasn't going to like that.

Sure enough, Tariq could feel Noble stiffen. "Stuck, huh? You're telling me this entire column has been sitting here for the last half hour because of a simple bolt? **YOU DO REALIZE, IF THIS WAS A REAL COMBAT SITUATION, THIS ENTIRE BATTALION COULD HAVE BEEN WIPED OUT? YOU DO REALIZE, WE CAN'T FUCKING MOVE UNTIL THIS TANK IS BACK IN WORKING ORDER? JESUS H CHRIST SERGEANT! YOU'RE A VETERAN OF DRACO III, YOU KNOW BETTER THAN THAT! CUT THE DAMN BOLT IF YOU HAVE TO! DO WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO, JUST GET IT FIXED!"**

Resisting the urge to rub his ear, Tariq instead settled for bellowing "Yes First Sergeant," at the top of his lungs.

To his relief, Noble nodded, then released him, before whirling around on the FNG. "As for you! Private...Corona was it?

"Koroma, First Sergeant!" he corrected, but Noble waved her dismissively.

"No, you're Private Corona," she insisted. "Private Corona, let me ask you a question: do you find me pretty?"

Tariq could see Corona was completely thrown by _that_ question. He started sputtering, but fortunately for him, Noble didn't seem to be interested in an answer because she continued to speak. "Do you find me gorgeous? The most beautiful woman you've ever seen in your life?"

Corona finally seemed to find his voice. "Uh...First Sergeant?" he finally managed to sputter out.

"I only ask Private," Noble began conversationally, "because you've been standing there, staring at me, **NOT DOING** _ **JACK SHIT**_ **! ARE YOU, OR ARE YOU NOT A PART OF THIS UNIT?** "

Corona nervously swallowing. "I am First Sergeant!"

" **THEN WHY THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST STAND THERE AND WATCH EVERYONE ELSE DO THE WORK?"**

Tariq could see Corona glance in his direction, and Tariq rolled his eyes. This fucker was about to throw him under the bus. What a fucking dick. He sighed. Well, it wasn't that surprising. Tariq had pegged this FNG as a Blue Falcon the moment he had been assigned to the platoon.

He braced himself as Corona opened his mouth.

"I don't know what I'm doing First Sergeant!" Corona abruptly said, much to Tariq's surprise. Huh. That was... unexpected.

 **"THEN YOU ASK!"** Noble screeched, before, like a switch had been flicked, she instantly calmed down and continued in a more moderate voice. "Ask questions Private. That is the entire point of this field exercise. So you, and all the other several hundred rookies we've received in the last few weeks can learn how to operate not only in a stressful environment, but _as a team_. I know AIT doesn't teach you everything about being a tanker. The battalion commander knows that. Fuck, even the divisional commander knows that. That's why each brigade is getting rotated through these training grounds so we can get everyone on the same page. But this doesn't work if **YOU JUST STAND THERE WITH YOUR THUMB UP YOUR ASS! GET YOUR HEAD ON STRAIGHT, PRIVATE CORONA**!"

She glanced at Tariq. "And you, Sergeant Helmand! You're an NCO now, a leader! If you got people, don't let them just stand there, put them to work! **IS THAT CLEAR!?"**

"Yes First Sergeant!" both Tariq and Corona bellowed in unison.

Noble gave a satisfied nod. "Good. Get to it then. I want this column back up and moving in the next thirty minutes, or you and the entire company is getting smoked. **LET'S MOVE TANKERS**!"

Without another word, Noble spun around on one heel and marched away, hopefully to go yell at someone else.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Tariq relaxed and let out a sigh of relief. He exchanged a look with Corona. He supposed he should thank him for not throwing him under the bus, but truth be told, Tariq didn't want to. Corona may have passed this test, but as far as Tariq was concerned, he still had a long ways to go before he proved himself.

"Well?" Tariq demanded. "You heard the First Sergeant. Don't just stand there looking like a retard. Go get the fucking sledgehammer!"

Corona nodded before darting towards the toolbox mounted on the side of Lillian's turret. As he walked away, Tariq turned his attention back to the task at hand. He rubbed his hands then rolled up his sleeves.

Time to fix this damn thing.

 **XXXXX**

 **Low Orbit, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0730 (Thirty minutes before contact)**

 **Gunner's Mate Amber Owain**

The Pelican rattled and shook as it passed through the upper atmosphere. The sound of someone's stomach gurgling caused Gunner's Mate Amber Owain's head to snap up, and her eyes darted around the bay until they fell on the woman strapped into the seat next to her. Her friend, Missile Technician(5) Haley "Poolsie" Pool wasn't looking too good. Her face had a green tinge to it, her eyes were slightly closed, and she was taking slow, but deep breaths. Basically, she looked about three seconds away from hurling. Great.

Amber started inching away from her, doing her best to put some distance between them, but she couldn't go far, strapped in her seat as she was. She looked around the bay for another seat she could move to, but the Pelican was packed and every seat was taken. Not that it would have mattered anyways: in this tightly enclosed space, if Poolsie puked, the smell would no doubt end up causing a chain reaction, and inevitably Amber would end up getting covered in vomit. And that was the last thing Amber needed. Not only would it be extremely disgusting, it would also completely suck because this was the last clean jacket she had, and Lieutenant Shepard was going to kill her if she returned from leave out of uniform again. At this point, all Amber could do was pray Poolsie kept it together long enough for the Pelican to achieve escape velocity.

The rattling and shaking continued to grow in intensity, and Amber became increasingly worried as Poolsie began letting out a series of small burps. She casted around, looking for something Poolsie could puke in, a bag or a bin or something, but there was nothing within arm's reach, all cargo having been secured prior to launch.

Shit.

Just when Amber thought the worst was about to occur, the Pelican let out one last tremor before abruptly cutting off, and a feeling of weightlessness descended over her. They were officially free of Actium's grasp.

But they weren't out of the woods just yet. By the looks of it, while zero gravity wasn't exactly making Poolsie feel worse, it wasn't exactly making her feel any **better** either. And that was a problem because while vomit alone was bad enough, _floating_ vomit was so much worse.

Amber anxiously waited in her seat as the Pelican continued along its journey towards the nearest space station in high orbit. She could feel weight returning almost immediately as the Pelican entered one of the landing bays, and she shot a relieved glance at Poolsie but unfortunately, Poolsie had clearly reached the point of no return. As soon as the Pelican had landed and even before the rear ramp had opened all the way, Poolsie's restraints were on the ground and she was already halfway out of the Pelican before Amber could realize what was going on.

Amber started to undo her own restraints but then hesitated. Wayward Station was _not_ their destination, Oedipus Station was. This was the only military shuttle heading there. If Amber got off now, she would have to wait at least an hour before the next one arrived, which hardly seemed worth it. Maybe Amber should go on ahead and let Poolsie catch up later. Poolsie was a big girl, surely she could handle being sick on her own?

Amber was just about to do just that when she realized, in her haste, Poolsie had accidentally left all her stuff behind. Fuck.

Amber undid her restraints. Gathering up her stuff as well as Poolsie's, Amber marched off the Pelican, swearing under her breath the entire time. She didn't have to go far to find Poolsie: Poolsie had her head stuck in the nearest trash can and was currently emptying her stomach.

Grimacing, Amber awkwardly stood next to her, trying to act casual, as dozens of people walked by, all of them staring at the disgusting noises Poolsie was currently making.

"Man, atmospheric exits are a bitch, aren't they?" Amber commented as Poolsie sat up, brushing her hair away from her face and wiping her mouth.

"It's not that," Poolsie said, sounding miserable. "I think I had too much to drink last night."

"How? We didn't have _that_ much. Just a couple of margaritas and I had that mojito. Back in high school, we would have drunken all that in the first **hour**."

"You're forgetting about those vodka shots we did with those guys," Poolsie said with a groan.

"...Oh yeah, I forgot about them."

"We shouldn't have done that."

"Oh, don't be such a prude," Amber said dismissively. "They were cute guys! Besides, they were paying."

Poolsie let out a scoff. "As if I need more free drinks. You already pay for all the alcohol I could ever want. Which, you don't need to do by the way."

"Well, what's the point in being rich if I can't pay for my friend's drinks every now and then?"

"You pay for them all the time," Poolsie pointed out. "Honestly, if it weren't for the fact I know how well off your family is, and the fact you're totally okay with doing that, I'd feel guilty about taking advantage of you."

"If it's such a problem, you don't have to drink them you know," Amber noted with a shrug.

Poolsie looked like she was about to say something, but then her stomach gurgled and she immediately bent over again. Amber grimaced and waited for Poolsie to finish.

"Man, I wish I had your tolerance of alcohol," Poolsie complained, sounding miserable as she straightened. "Here I am, puking my guts out while you're standing around like it's just another Tuesday morning even though you had twice as much as I did. That is so not fair."

"What can I say, I had a lot of practice," Amber cheerfully announced. "Remember all those parties we had in high school?" Amber paused. "Okay, maybe _you_ wouldn't."

"Hey! What makes you say that?" Poolsie said in protest.

Amber raised an eyebrow and stared pointedly at the trash can Poolsie was throwing up in.

"Okay, point," Poolsie sheepishly admitted.

"Yeah. Exactly. Now, are you just about done yet? I wanna get to Oedipus Station and do some souvenir shopping before we have to get back to the _Gabrielle_ , so let's get back to the Pelican before it..." Amber trailed off as she realized in the time they had been standing here, the Pelican had already left. "Shit. Now we got to wait an hour before the next shuttle. That's just great."

"Sorry," Poolsie said meekly. "But you know we still have three hours before we need to report back to the ship."

"Yeah, well, that was three hours' worth of time I could have used for shopping!" Amber protested irritably, before shaking her head. "Whatever I guess." She began rubbing her temple. An hour. They were going to be stuck here on this station of the next hour or so. What could they do in the meantime?

That was the problem about Wayward Station. Unlike Oedipus Station which was a full civilian station, Wayward was a UNSC Navy installation, with a small civilian presence scattered throughout the building. The largest concentration of civilians was the food court at the top of the station. Which actually, wouldn't be that bad of a place to go. Now that she thought about it, Amber realized she was kind of hungry.

"Well, since we're stuck here until the next shuttle arrives, we might as well go to the food court," Amber finally announced.

Poolsie groaned. "I'm not sure I could handle the smell of food right now," she protested.

"Well, I'm hungry, and I'm not going to stand around here all day, so you're just going to have to suck it up," Amber insisted. "Either that, or you stay here by yourself."

An annoyed look passed over Poolsie's face and for a moment it looked as if she was about to protest, but at Amber's insistent glare, Poolsie relented.

"Fine," she resignedly said. "Maybe I'll get something minty so my breath doesn't smell like vomit all morning."

"At the very least, we can get you some ginger ale and some crackers," Amber agreed as she headed towards the nearest elevators and smacked the call button, causing a set of doors to immediately open.

 _"Please state your destination,"_ the elevator prompted.

"Food court," Amber declared.

" _Acknowledged_."

As the doors slid shut, Amber abruptly felt her personal computer behind her left ear buzzing, indicating she had just received a new message. She cocked her head and immediately, a holographic display appeared before her very eyes.

Flicking her eyes to the side to clear the archive of pictures and videos she had taken of their party last night, Amber called forward the new message. It was a simple text message from one of her aunts. A rather generic "how are you doing" message. Still, Amber hadn't seen her aunt in a while so Amber quickly dashed out a reply.

"Is that from your Aunt Megan?" she heard Poolsie ask and Amber glanced in her direction to see Poolsie not so subtly trying to read who the message was addressed to.

"Nope," Amber said simply as she finished her reply and sent it. "It's from my Aunt Ducky. She's assigned to one of the Army units on Actium's surface. We've been trying to get together for like, dinner or something ever since the _Gabrielle_ arrived in system a week ago for refit, but so far our schedules haven't worked out."

"Oh," Poolsie commented, sounding disappointed. "That sucks. I was hoping to see her again. Your Aunt Megan, that is. I don't think I ever met your Aunt Ducky before."

Amber glanced at her. "I forget: how do you know my Aunt Megan again?"

"You know, she was my favorite teacher in high school, right? I was super bummed when she got recalled back to active service in our senior year."

Amber felt like smacking herself. "Shit. You know, I keep forgetting we went to the same high school. You know, it's funny how we can grow up in the same town on the same colony, go to the same high school, know the same people, and yet never know each other existed until we both joined the Navy."

"Life is weird that way," Poolsie agreed.

"No kidding," Amber muttered to herself as she felt the elevator come to a stop. There was a mute chime and the doors slid open with a gentle _hiss_.

Amber stepped out and took a moment to admire the view. While the food in this area was far from the best she'd ever had, Amber had to admit, this food court had one of the best views she had ever seen; unlike other stations, the roof over the court was actually a giant window, which showed the space outside the station and allowed patrons to eat under the stars. It was the closest thing space station residents had to an outdoor cafe.

Of course, it wasn't _actually_ a window. Obviously, having a giant window on a space station, much less a military one, would be a massive weakness and a tremendous design flaw. Instead, the "window" above their heads was actually a giant hologram projector connected to a series of cameras on the station's hull which allowed it to depict the outside of the station in real time. It wasn't the same as having a real window, but the resolution was such that most people couldn't tell the difference.

Amber glanced around. Currently the hologram was showing the space above the station, allowing her to get an idea of just how much stuff was floating in orbit around Actium, both military and civilian. Satellites of all sizes and shapes, space platforms, docking stations, refit and resupply installations, dry docks, construction yards, and in the distance, Amber could just barely make out Byzas Station, the orbital defense platform floating in geosynchronous orbit above the city of Byzas.

Floating between the installations were all the ships. Most of them were military, their dark gray hulls casting shadows in the night sky, but Amber could still see a number of colorful hulls indicating civilian ships.

"Hey, look, there's the _Gabrielle_!" Poolsie suddenly pointed out, and Amber could see a refit station floating by overhead with a _Halberd-_ class destroyer docked to it, the words UNSC _Gabrielle_ clearly written on its hull.

"Ugh," Amber said with a frown. "I don't want to even think about the ship right now. We're on leave, and will be for the next few hours. Let's be on leave."

She urged Poolsie to continue walking and together they headed towards where most of the restaurants were located. As they drew closer, Amber was suddenly assaulted with the scent of freshly cooked food, and her stomach let out a growl as the smell triggered her hunger. She turned to ask Poolsie what she was interested in getting, but then paused. It was clear to Amber the smell was having the complete opposite effect on Poolsie: the green tinge from before had returned and Poolsie was gripping her stomach.

"You know what? I think I'm going to go call my parents instead. I'll see you in like, thirty minutes," Poolsie said rather quickly.

Before Amber could protest, Poolsie dashed away from the food court, leaving Amber all alone.

Amber sighed in annoyance. Well that was rude of Poolsie to ditch her friend like that. Somedays, Amber had to wonder why she was even friends with her. It's not like they had that much in common...

Amber shook her head. Whatever, it didn't matter right now. Amber was determined that today was going to be a good day.

Nothing was going to ruin it.

 **XXXXX**

 **Somewhere in UNSC Controlled Space  
May 6, 2545  
0750 (Ten minutes before contact)**

 **Private First Class Adel Savaschi**

The ground rattled and shook as the last of the explosions died off in the distance.

So. It had come down to this. Just as he always thought it would. Master Gunnery Sergeant Adel Savaschi glanced to his left, then to his right, looking over the corpses of his shattered battalion. Six hundred and fifty Marines had marched into combat; out of all of them, Adel was the only one to make it this far. Poor bastards; but then again, that was the price of warfare: you either had what it took to survive, or you didn't, something Adel could attest to, having been in this exact situation more times than he could count.

The whine of anti-gravity engines sounded in the distance. Adel looked up and nodded to himself. The Covenant were definitely coming. Again. That was hardly surprising. The stupid motherfuckers never did know when they were beaten. They would keep on coming until either they had won through sheer force of numbers, or every single one of them was dead. In some ways, Adel could respect them for their stubbornness. But the Covenant was underestimating just how pigheaded and stubborn Adel could be. Adel had no intention of giving up his position. Not now. Not with so much at stake. Which meant he was going to have to kill every single one of those assholes.

That suited Adel just fine. Truth be told, he kind of preferred it that way.

Grabbing his battle rifle, Adel checked it over as he planned out his defense. He knew what was coming. He had done a number on the Covenant and as a result, all that was left were Elites. The most deadly of all creatures in the Covenant Army, similar to how the Marines were the most badass force in the UNSC, Elites were deadly creatures possessing personal energy shields that allowed them to close in with their enemy and engage them in hand to hand combat. For anybody else, that would normally be a terrifying prospect but not for Adel. For Adel was a battle hardened, master warrior forged by the fires of war. A top rate master in all forms of martial arts, the deadliest sniper in the history of the UNSCMC with over nine hundred confirmed kills, and the youngest Master Gunnery Sergeant _ever_ due to his ability to survive when no one else had were only _some_ of his accolades.

A loud rumbling filled the air but Adel didn't need to look up to know what it was: the feet of hundreds of Elites charging towards his position. Shit was about to hit the fan.

Chambering a round on his BR, Adel shouldered his rifle and brought it to bear and watched as a mass of Covenant Elites surged towards him, their plasma rifles glowing and spit dripping from their mandibles as they salivated in anticipation. A couple of the Elites screamed out some war cries, which Adel guessed were supposed to be terrifying, but to Adel they sounded like mews from a kitten. He decided to let them know what a real predator sounded like so he took a deep breath and let out a loud _ROARRRRRR_!

As the roar echoed away, Adel was amused to see some of the younger Elites beginning to waver, only charging forward at the urging of their peers. Adel laughed. Fucking pussies.

Plasma fire began raining down around him but Adel didn't even flinch as he lined up his shot. The Elites were well within range, but Adel held his fire, preferring to wait until he could see the whites of their eyes. Most people would probably have panicked by now and opened fire, but not Adel. Adel had been and seen so much shit already, this sight hardly even phased him. He held his fire and waited until the Elites were less than thirty meters away, until they were close enough Adel could even smell their rancid breaths, before tightening his finger and -

"Adel, what the fuck are you doing with that frying pan?"

Adel jumped, barely managing to avoid letting out a squeak of alarm as he was completely caught off guard by the question. He looked around wildly and noticed that he was no longer on a field of battle but inside a kitchen, and that, distracted as he had been, he had apparently grabbed a frying pan and was now holding it like it was a rifle.

Quickly lowering it, Adel frantically tried to think of a plausible excuse for his actions.

"I was, uh, I was checking to make sure it was clean," Adel finally announced before nodding to himself. Yeah, that sounded reasonable.

Unfortunately, his friend and team leader, Corporal Samuel 'Sam' Yilmaz, was not so easily fooled.

"You were daydreaming again, weren't you?" Sam accused.

"What? No," Adel quickly said, then inwardly cursed. He had said that too quickly; there was no way Sam wouldn't see the lie for what it was.

Sure enough, Sam shook his head. "You and your fantasies Adel."

"I wasn't daydreaming," Adel asserted.

"Uh-huh."

"I wasn't!" Adel insisted.

Sam stared at him. "Dude, I know you're lying. The tip of your ears are turning red."

Adel automatically reached up to cover them, then swore, regretting that one time he had gotten drunk and accidentally let slip to his teammates that little factoid.

"So, what were you dreaming about _this_ time? Wait, let me guess: you were some great warrior standing all alone on some distant battlefield?" Sam sarcastically asked as he wiped down a plate and put it back on the stack. "That's got to be it: that's what you're always dreaming about."

"I don't always dream like that!" Adel protested, then froze. "I mean, if I were to daydream, which I _**don't**_ , it wouldn't be about that at all!"

"Hey man, you don't need to be upset about having dreams."

Adel looked up as the third and last member of their team, Lance Corporal Isaac 'X' Xanthus came walking into the room, pushing a cart full of dirty dishes. As he began to unload the cart, he added, "As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, 'Don't be pushed by your problems, but be led by your dreams.'"

"That's all good and everything, but Adel here needs to face reality," Sam snapped. "And the reality is, Adel here is nothing more than a filthy Boot who has never seen combat and who's stuck washing the Navy's dishes because he done fucked up and somehow, dragged his team down with him!"

"What? This is not my fault!" Adel protested, gesturing at the soapy sink and the dirty dishes that surrounded them.

Sam and X exchanged a look before both of them burst out laughing.

"Really?" Sam finally said with a derisive snort. "Funny, I seem to remember it was _you_ , not X, harassing the shit out of that Navy chick."

"And then you cussed out that other Navy dude when he tried to intervene," X pointed out.

"That _**Se**_ man shouldn't have been giving us orders," Adel tried to argue. "We're Marines: we're the ones doing the _actual_ fighting."

"Okay, first off, who's this ' _we'_ you're talking about? _You_ haven't done jack shit you fucking Boot," Sam snapped. "Second, that's not how the fucking military works. You called a PO1 a 'fucking fag.' A PO1! Do you even know what a PO1 is? It's a petty officer first class, the Navy equivalent of a Marine staff sergeant. What you did was like, calling Staff Sergeant Reynolds, or someone, a fucking fag! You're lucky all he did was put you on mess hall duty! And you still think this isn't your fault?"

Adel found he didn't have a retort to that.

"Well, it's still a bunch of bullshit," he muttered.

"Shut up."

"No, he's right though," X interjected as he loaded an entire stack of plates into a dishwasher. "As John Ruskin once said: 'Punishment is the last and least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.'"

Adel stared at him. "What the fuck does that even mean?" he demanded.

"It means punishment is the worst way to convince someone to _not_ commit a crime," Sam replied.

Adel considered that and decided there was no way he was going to disagree with that. "How the fuck do you know all these people?" he decided to ask X instead.

"I… read?"

"I read too, but I don't know half the shit you seem to," Adel pointed out.

"I read books, Adel. You read comic books," X drily noted.

"They're graphic novels," Adel protested. "Not comic books. How many times do I got to tell you guys?"

"Whatever."

"Man," Sam said with a shake of his head. "X, remind me again: why you're an infantryman? With your ASVAB scores, I'm sure you could have easily gotten a cushy job as an intelligence analyst or some sort of cyberspace technician. What are you doing here with us crayon eaters?"

X grinned. "As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: 'War educates the sense, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man.'"

"What the _fuck_ does that even mean!?" Adel demanded as a moment's thought.

"It means warfare is a wonderful tool of self-enlightenment," X explained. "War puts you in a situation where you are stripped of all technology and tricks, of all of society's rules and lies, and you're just left with you, yourself, and your skills. You're forced to confront all your preconceived notions about life and your own self, and it forces you to become a better man."

Adel and Sam stared at him.

"X," Adel slowly began, "what _have_ you been reading?"

"Seriously," Sam added. "Where the fuck did you get that shit from? That sounds fucking stupid."

X shrugged. "That's what my twin brother told me," he admitted. "But then again, that's why I joined the Corps: best and most badass warriors around."

Adel scoffed. "Jeez. I just joined because I wanted to kill some aliens."

"Yeah, I think we've all figured out that one at this point," Sam said with a sneer. "After all, all you do is daydream about being a 'great warrior.'"

"Fuck you Corporal," Adel snapped. "I don't need to daydream because I know I'm going to be the best Marine there ever was."

"Every Boot Marine thinks that," Sam dismissively pointed out.

"The difference is, I'm actually going to be one!"

"Uh-huh."

"I am!" Adel insisted. "Just you wait: when I have to drag your sorry ass out of the fire, I'm going to _**so**_ rub it in your face."

"I'm sure you will," Sam said dismissively. "But, in the meantime, because you're the one who got us in this position in the first place..." He walked over and deposited a dozen greasy pots and pans at Adel's feet. "You get to wash these. And remember what that chief petty officer said: can't use the machine cause it'll clog it up, got to wash it by hand."

Adel opened his mouth to protest, but Sam had already walked away. Adel then glanced at X, but all he did was offer a sympathetic look and a soapy sponge.

Letting out a loud sigh of exasperation, Adel took the offered sponge and started working. He couldn't wait for a Covenant attack.

Then, he would be able to finally show everyone what he was _really_ made of.

 **XXXXX**

 **Yankee Remote Scanning Outpost, Heliopause, Ambracian System  
May 6, 2545  
0753 (Seven minutes before contact)**

...INITIALIZING...

SIGNAL DETECTED.

WARNING! PROFILE MATCHES SIGNATURE OF INBOUND SHIPS.

SEARCHING DATABASE FOR SCHEDULED FLEET ARRIVALS.

...

...

...

ERROR! NO MATCH FOUND!

SEARCHING CIVILIAN MANIFESTS FOR SCHEDULED FLEET ARRIVALS.

...

...

...

ERROR! NO MATCH FOUND!

SEARCHING MILITARY RECORDS FOR SCHEDULED FLEET ARRIVALS.

...

...

...

ERROR! NO MATCH FOUND!

ATTEMPTING TO ESTABLISH COMMUNICATIONS: ATTEMPT 1.

...

...

ERROR! ATTEMPT FAILED. RETRY.

ATTEMPTING TO ESTABLISH COMMUNICATIONS: ATTEMPT 2.

...

...

ERROR! ATTEMPT FAILED. RAISING DEFCON ALERT STATUS TO LEVEL 2.

FINAL ATTEMPT TO ESTABLISH COMMUNICATIONS.

...

...

ERROR! ATTEMPT FAILED.

ALERTING ACTIUM DEFENSE COMMAND

…..

….

…

* * *

1\. The title of this story is inspired by the 2011 sci-fi film, _Battle: Los Angeles_ (known internationally by the title, _World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles,)_ starring Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez, and Bridget Moynahan. It's admittedly not the best movie in the world. Among its flaws: the characters are a bit cliché, the cinematographers had apparently never heard of camera stabilization, and the entire movie is essentially (dare I say it,) American military propaganda. That being said, I personally found it to be a really fun war film, and the realistic way (relative to other action movies of the same genre) the military is portrayed as an inspiration for some of my stories.

2\. The XT-47 stun pistol and its description is partially based on the "NI-408 taser pistol" from the 2014 _Robocop_ remake

3\. The "11M" or "11 Mike" MOS code used to be the US Army military occupational specialty code for a "mechanized infantryman." It's no longer used by the US Army, having been folded into the general "11B: Infantryman" code back in the early 2000's as the Army felt there was no reason to have that many specialized infantrymen. Given the theoretically massive size of the UNSC Army, I felt they would have brought back all these unique MOS identifiers, similar to the way the current US Marine Corps does it.

4\. Crunchie: a derisive term used by US military tank crewmen to refer to dismounted infantry (as in, it's the sound a soldier makes when they get run over by a tank.)

5\. Missile Technician: from my understanding, in the modern day US Navy, the rating of "Missile Technician" is only available for submarines. On surface ships, sailors with the rating of "Gunner's Mate" maintain and operate both guns and missile launchers alike. However, like the US Army example, given the theoretical size of the UNSC Navy, I felt the ratings would be split into two, to provide for more specialization.


	2. Chapter 2

Many thanks to everyone who viewed, fav, or followed the first chapter. Special thanks to those who left reviews. I always like responding to my reviews, so I'm going to take a moment to do just that.

Somedude124: Thanks for your words of encouragement! I always try my best to write a good story and I hope I can maintain the same quality of writing my readers have come to expect from me in this story. I'm not going to lie though, I have sinking feeling my first few chapters are going to feel a little wonky, mostly because, as I mentioned in chapter one, I'm trying things I've never done before, but I'm hoping with a little bit of help from my readers, my chapters will only improve in quality from here on out.

CommissarBS: a return reviewer! You're feedback is much appreciated and as always, you raise some good points! To address some of them:

The inclusion and expansion of the UNSC Air Force in my stories is for several reasons. 1: I kind of like the Air Force (there, I said it.) 2: The general lack of information about the AF in the canon allows me to expand on them and utilize them as I see fit without running the risk of taking _**too**_ many liberties from canon. 3: My knowledge of the military is somewhat limited, but within those limits, I'm much more familiar with Air Force (and Army) terminology and procedures when compared to the Navy or Marines, which is why those two branches really take center stage in my stories.

Now, with that being said, you raise a good point and I think you're absolutely correct in that, based on the information we have from canon, the AF would undoubtedly be sidelined in a situation I've created. Because of that, and after a review, I've decided I think I'll work on reducing their role a bit. I've got at least one major battle scene planned involving them, but after that, I think they'll take more a sideline row in the battle. I hope you don't mind

As for your other point, in retrospect, that was a lot of characters and names to throw out all at one time (ironic because I think I left a review on a different story pointing that exact same thing out; guess it's easier for me to give out critique than to actually implement it… lesson learned I guess!) Unfortunately, I was still in full-steam ahead mode when I wrote this chapter, so all six main characters appear here, but this will be the last time they do. In the future, I'll be sure to break things up and spend a bit more time fleshing out the characters so at the very least, my readers can learn their names.

Thanks for all the advice so far, please, by all means, keep it up!

* * *

 **Chapter 2**

 **UNSC** _ **Kilkis**_ **(BB-123), High Orbit, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0755 (Five minutes before contact)**

 **Admiral Lukas Spaatz**

"Admiral Spaatz? Your presence is requested in the CIC, sir."

At the sound of his aide's voice, Admiral Lukas Spaatz looked up from the report he was reading and turned around. Emerging from the hologram pedestal just to the left of the bulkhead door was the avatar of his aide-de-camp, a second-generation smart AI that went by the name of Kanin. Kanin stood there, with his paws clasped behind his back, patiently waiting for a response.

Over the course of his forty year naval career, Spaatz had the opportunity to work with a wide variety of smart AIs and out of all of them, Kanin was one of the more memorable ones. For starters, there was his choice of avatar: most smart AIs chose the form of some sort of human being in order to better relate with the humans they were serving. Not Kanin. Instead, his avatar was that of an anthropomorphic hare, clad in single breasted, scarlet colored, military style frock coat, complete with a set of unidentifiable medals pinned over his left breast. He wore no other articles of clothing, no pants or shoes, though he did have a cover, a simple black tricorne, that he would wear on occasion, but never indoors as that would be against Navy regulations.

Then there was his accent. Kanin spoke with a British accent only... it wasn't. The best way Spaatz could describe it was that Kanin's accent was that of a non-Brit _pretending_ to have a British accent only, he wasn't very good at it. As a result, he tried to compensate by using as many stereotypical British words and pronunciations as possible. It made for a rather odd speech pattern and for an AI with full access to Waypoint, it was a bit of a mystery as to why he just didn't base his voice pattern off a native Briton if a British accent was what he wanted.

But, personality quirks aside, Kanin had proven to be just as intelligent and capable as any member of his kind. Thus, when Spaatz picked up on the tension in Kanin's voice, he immediately became alert.

"What's going on?" Spaatz asked as he stood up and grabbed both his jacket and his earpiece. As he put both of them on, he noticed something. "And is it the reason we're now at DEFCON 2?"

"Aye, sir," Kanin replied. "One of our remote scanning outpost picked up a large mass movin' through slipspace. It appears to be headed in our direction sir."

Spaatz felt his heart skip a beat.

"A large mass? What, like a ship?" he asked. All sorts of scenarios began swirling around in his brain, none of them good, but he didn't want to act rashly without more information.

"Unknown at this time, sir."

Spaatz nodded in understanding. Kanin may have made a wonderful aide and an excellent planetary system's manager, however even he had limits.

He headed out the door and towards the CIC, doing his best to resist the urge to run. It wouldn't be very good for morale for the crew to see a four star admiral running through the corridors of their ship. Fortunately, he didn't have to go far: even on a ship as large as a _Vindication_ -class light battleship, everything was so close together and thus, the CIC was only down the corridor from the small office he had commandeered in order to finish up his inspection report.

Barely acknowledging the two Marine guards as they snapped to attention at the sight of him, Spaatz entered the CIC. There wasn't much to see. The combat information center was located in the center of the ship, surrounded by several decks, almost two and half meters of titanium-A plating, and dozens upon dozens of weapons and point defense systems. As such, the CIC was filled with all sorts of displays and monitors, most of which were currently manned by naval officers and sailors of various designators and ratings. Sitting in an open space in the center of the room was a large tactical display. The display was active, showing Actium, as well as a live feed of the position of every single military and civilian station and vessel in orbit.

Standing next to the display was Kanin, as well as the captain of the _Kilkis_ , Captain Yirenkyi.

"What's the situation?" Spaatz asked without preamble as he made his way to the table.

Captain Yirenkyi was the first to reply. "Yankee RSO located in the Heliopause picked up the signature of a large mass moving through slipspace in our direction sir," he began and automatically, the display began to change. It zipped through the system flying passed the planets of Tenedos, Korakesion, and Myonessus, all the way to edge of the system where Yankee RSO was located in the Heliopause, the invisible barrier that marked the point where the Ambracia System ended, and interstellar space began. "The onboard AI concluded the signature matched that of an inbound fleet."

Spaatz did his best to prevent his emotions from showing on his face. "Were we able to obtain a positive identification?"

Yirenkyi shook his head. "The RSO is an older model; it's not equipped with slipstream space probes and thus, not capable of that fine tune identification."

Spaatz glanced at Kanin. "Have we verified this mass is not an inbound civilian or military convoy?"

"Aye sir. Twice. No fleet of that size is scheduled to arrive in system within the next two days, and the only fleet that would match that theoretical mass is the Air Force's No 33 Air Base Group, only they're not expected to arrive for another week or so. Furthermore, all attempts at establishing communications with the mass have failed."

"Failed because we were unable to go through, or because they were rejecting the call?"

"The first time failed to patch through sir, the second was rejected."

"And we sure this signature is actually there? That it's not a glitch?"

Kanin reached up to scratch one of his long, furry ears."

"As sure as we can be sir, without being able to physically examine the hardware."

Cold tendrils of fear began gripping Spaatz' heart, and he did his best to remain calm. "Kanin, what's the likelihood of the No 33 Air Base Group arriving in system early due to fluctuations in slipspace?"

"About a five percent chance sir," Kanin instantly replied.

At that, Yirenkyi put both hands on the edge of the display and leaned forward. "So, it's the Covenant then?"

"We don't know that for certain, Captain," Spaatz cautioned, even though he couldn't think of what else it could be. "Still, we need to start taking precautions. Kanin, who's on picket duty right now? And which Air Force carrier is on QRA?"

"Rear Admiral Tethong's battle group is performing maneuvers outside the orbit of Tenedos sir," Kanin replied. "And the UNSC _Trenchard_ is on QRA duty. But the _Trenchard_ is holding position on the other side of Actium sir."

"They will do. Comms!" Spaatz barked, catching the attention of the _Kilkis'_ communication officer. "Contact Admiral Tethong, have him link up the UNSC _Trenchard_ and form Joint Task Force Yankee then -"

"Sir, we're getting a signal!" Yirenkyi suddenly exclaimed. "It's -"

 _"Slipspace rupture detected."_

Spaatz jerked towards the display, heart racing, as the image immediately zoomed in on a swirling blue vortex of an active slipspace portal that had suddenly opened up the vast emptiness of space between Actium and Tenedos. Shooting out of the portal came -

Purple bulbous hulls. Electric blue energy shields. Plasma turrets primed and ready to fire.

The Covenant.

The entire combat information center watched in shocked silence as nine Covenant warships, ranging from three hundred meter long light cruisers to a two kilometer long battlecruiser, dropped out of slipspace into real space and began forming up. In the silence, a lone voice rang out.

"Blimey," Kanin said in a loud whisper that echoed through the room. "That's a bloody Covenant invasion force!"

At once, everyone began speaking at the same time.

"Alert! Multiple hostiles..."

"...nine Covenant capital ships..."

"Confirmed presence of Covenant..."

"…emergency signals…"

"Byzas Station confirming visual..."

"...bring our fighter screen around..."

Spaatz took a deep breath, allowing all the noise to wash over him as he centered himself. Then, he began barking out orders.

"Sound general quarters, all hands, battle stations! Kanin, activate a system wide red alert, bring us up to DEFCON 1! Navigation, initiate Cole Protocol! Comms, I want Winter Contingency broadcasted across all military channels then send out a planetary distress signal and alert High Command: Actium is under attack! Captain Yirenkyi!"

"Sir?"

"Take control of your ship!"

"Aye aye sir! Officer of the Deck, sound general quarters and set condition one! Helm, bring us about to heading zero three zero one! Weaps, arm all warheads, standby the MACs, and prepare for ship to ship combat!"

In the meantime, Spaatz had turned his attention to the tactical display and watching as the Covenant began deploying their ships into formation. Shoving that display to the side, he opened one of Actium and jabbed at a spot some five thousand kilometers above the ODPs. "There! Kanin, I want all military ships that can fight to form a battle line at that position, then designate a place for all civilian ships to dump their non-living human cargo so they can begin preparations for the evacuation of the citizens of Actium. Get the governor's office working on that! Then I want Byzas and Cyprium Stations to reorientate their MACs in the direction of the hostiles, then have Astoria Station come about to cover the hole Cyprium will leave in our defensive grid in case the Covenant try to jump in behind us."

"Aye sir!"

"Order the Air Force to reequip all their interplanetary ballistic missile with anti-ship warheads then open all silo doors. Also get them to bring whatever fighters they have available from the surface so they can start forming a fighter screen for our battle groups!"

"Sir?"

"What?" Spaatz demanded as he turned to Yirenkyi.

"I'm prepping a dropship for you so that you can return to your headquarters on Heliopolis Station," Yirenkyi reported and with a start, Spaatz looked around. For a moment, he had forgotten where he was: the _Kilkis_ was _not_ his flagship, he was only here because he had been conducting an inspection of the fleet.

However, as Spaatz glanced at the tac display in front of him once more, he realized that between the chaos of the fleet bringing itself up to full alert, as well as the need to task all the dropships to other duties, it would simply be more efficient for Spaatz to remain where he was for the time being.

"No, there's no time," Spaatz insisted. "I'll set up shop here until a more opportune moment arises for me to return to my headquarters. In the meantime, re-task that dropship for more pressing matters – see if they can't bring up more crews or munitions from the surface."

Yirenkyi nodded his head, then scurried off, leaving Spaatz to try to think of what else he needed his forces to get ready for, but nothing came to mind. All around him, the CIC was bustling with frantic energy as the crew went about executing his orders. Spaatz wanted nothing more than to encourage them, or yell at them, if only so that he could feel like he was doing _something_. But he resisted, as the last thing these men and women needed was more stress from his part.

Spaatz tightly gripped the edge of the display to stop himself from fidgeting. This was the one thing he hated about being in charge: once he had given his initial orders, all he could do was wait until they had been executed before he could give any more. And it was the waiting part that always got to him. Knowing that the enemy was closing in, that their deaths could be minutes away, and that there was nothing Spaatz could do to prepare for it. It was at times like these, Spaatz longed for the days when he was a simple Ensign, fresh out from training, serving aboard his very first warship. Back then, there would have been over a dozen tasks, all of which would have demanded his attention. It would kept him busy enough to prevent him from thinking about the upcoming battle. And the losses they were going to take.

Spaatz glanced at his tac display. He had two screens active: one showing the state of the Covenant invasion fleet, one showing the state of _his_ forces. Things were looking grim. By the looks of it, the Covenant had finished maneuvering into battle formation and were now making their way towards Actium at maximum burn. In contrast, maybe less than five percent of his forces had assumed battle formations.

"Kanin, how long is it going to take for our ships to form up?" Spaatz finally asked.

Kanin's avatar instantly appeared by his side. "We're working on it sir," he reported. "The problem is sir, a number of ships were in the middle of getting either refit or resupplied, so they're startin' out cold. It's going to take some time to get them to full alert status. Furthermore, other ships are reportin' they not operating at max capacity, as a number of their crews were on leave when -"

"Kanin!" Spaatz snapped, his impatience getting the better of him. "I need a number!"

Kanin fell silent.

"I estimate it will take fifteen minutes before we have fifty percent of our fleet in defensive position sir," he finally reported. "Approximately another fifteen minutes after that to bring the rest of the fleet up to speed. For ground installations, it will take anywhere between thirty to fifty minutes before they come to full alert status."

"And how long before the Covenant are on top of us?"

"If they maintain their current speed and velocity? They'll reach maximum effective weapons range in ten minutes."

Spaatz pinched the bridge of his nose. "We need more time," he muttered out loud. He glanced at his display and felt a sinking sensation in his abdomen when he realized there was only one way he was going to achieve that. "Get me a direct line to Rear Admiral Tethong."

Tethong's image immediately appeared on his screen.

" _Admiral Spaatz_ ," he greeted.

"Pramod, listen to me carefully," Spaatz began. "As you've probably noticed by now, Actium is under attack. The fleet is forming up in a defensive line, but it's going to take time. In the meantime, the Covenant are closing in fast. Our best guess? We'll be in range of their weapons in ten minutes." Spaatz paused, hating what he was going to have to say next. "Admiral, I need you to take your battle group and stall the Covenant advance long enough for the fleet to assume some semblance of a formation."

For his part, Tethong didn't seemed too perturbed about the fact he was being ordered to undertake what was essentially a suicide mission. He nodded, as if that was what he'd been expecting.

 _"How much time do you need?"_

Kanin flashed a sign over the display. Fifteen minutes.

"I need at least fifteen minutes," Spaatz reported.

 _"You'll get twenty,"_ Tethong promised.

Spaatz nodded in agreement, even though they both knew that was impossible. As strong as Tethong's battle group was, against the Covenant, they would be nothing more than a speed bump on the road. But at this point, Spaatz would take what he could get.

"We'll have more units coming online in a few minutes," Spaatz announced, feeling exorbitantly guilty for what he was having his troops do. "As soon as they do, I'll send them out to rein-"

 _"No."_

"Excuse me?" Spaatz asked, surprised.

 _"No sir,"_ Tethong added. _"We can't afford to send out our fleet in piecemeal, the Covenant will just defeat us in detail. Use all the ships you can get your hands on to set up a proper defense while I take my forces and buy you as much time as I can."_

Spaatz swallowed, then grimly nodded. As much as he hated to admit it, Tethong was right, and they both knew it. "I'll make sure High Command knows what you and your battle group did here today Admiral," Spaatz promised. "And I'll make sure your family will be alright."

" _The Navy is my family sir. Hold fast, and hold the line."_

"I will. You have my word Admiral," Spaatz vowed.

Tethong nodded, and Spaatz could see his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed, the only sign of his nerves. _"In that case sir, this is Rear Admiral Pramod Tethong, UNSC Navy, signing off."_

He snapped off a salute, one that Spaatz quickly returned, before his image winked out of existence. For a few seconds, Spaatz just stood there, feeling winded, like he had just ran a couple laps around the ship. On his display, he watched as Tethong's battle group emerge from the dark side of Tenedos, revealing their presence to the Covenant. They ignited their sublight engines and began heading straight for the invasion force at max burn.

Spaatz took a moment to close his eyes and bow his head in respect for the hundreds of men and women that were about to die. Then he turned his attention back to the task at hand.

"Comms!" Spaatz snapped. "Sitrep on the fleet?"

 _Kilkis's_ communication officer looked up from her display. "The entire orbital defense grid is now at DEFCON 1 sir, however we're still getting word out to some of the ground installations."

"Then what are you doing still talking to me for?" Spaatz snapped and the officer hastily returned to her station.

As she turned away, all Spaatz could do was glare at his monitor. What the hell was taking so long?

 **XXXXX**

 **Wayward Station, High Orbit, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0802 (Two minutes after contact)**

 **Gunner's Mate Amber Owain**

Amber was excited. She hadn't realized there was a Tippy's breakfast place aboard this station.

Tippy's, in her opinion, had some of the best breakfast food on this side of the galaxy including her favorite, blueberry pancakes. She had ordered three slices, topped off with some butter, a small dish of tater tots, and a Frappuccino because, well, why not?

As an afterthought, she had also gone ahead and ordered a small cup of ginger ale for Poolsie. They didn't have any crackers, but at the very least, Poolsie could have something to sip on that would hopefully help settle her stomach before they returned to the ship.

Amber was the best friend ever, wasn't she?

After paying for her stuff, she made her way into the seating area, quickly locating a two seat dining table near the entrance. Tossing her jacket over the back of the seat to make sure it didn't get dirty, she sat down and eagerly ripped open the small container of strawberry syrup she had ordered with her meal and began generously lathering her pancakes. She was about to dig in when she happened to look up and spotted Poolsie returning to the area, looking a bit worried. Amber automatically raised her hand in greeting, but Poolsie wasn't looking in her direction.

Rolling her eyes, Amber reached up to her communicator and sent out a ping. Just as she did, Poolsie turned around and glanced in her direction. Amber quickly waved at her and Poolsie hastily made her way towards her, shoving her way passed all the other tables and patrons.

"Hey!" Amber greeted as Poolsie joined her. "How are the 'rents? Oh, and I didn't know what you wanted, but I got you some ginger ale, just in case."

She glanced up, expecting Poolsie to at least thank her, but Poolsie wasn't paying attention.

"Amber," she began in an odd voice, staring straight at the ceiling. "Is it just me or, is the _Gabrielle_ leaving port?"

Amber looked up. Sure enough, the _Gabrielle_ had broken away from her refit station and was firing her maneuvering thrusters, as if she was about to head towards deep space.

A wave of panic rushed through Amber.

"SHIT!" she yelped, tossing her fork onto the table. Leaping to her feet, she grabbed her jacket and started towards the door. "I thought you said we had a couple hours before we had to report back to the ship!? Fuck, Shepard is going to captain's mast our asses if we go UA!"

Poolsie grabbed a hold of Amber's arm before she could go anywhere. "Amber, _all_ the ships are leaving," she grimly pointed out.

That gave Amber pause and she quickly looked again, this time paying closer attention to the actions of everyone else. It was like Poolsie had said, every single ship, civilian and military, were pulling away from their docking stations and were scrambling in all directions. Even Byzas Station appeared to be firing her thrusters, turning her massive bulk and reorienting her main cannon in another direction. Amber didn't have her HUD in front of her right now, so she had no idea what they were aiming at, but as a gunner's mate, she could tell they were traversing their gun so that it was pointed towards… the edge of the system? But why? The only reason they would do that was if there was…

"Oh… _fuck_ …" she whispered as realization struck her. And then that was when the general quarters alarm began to sound.

" _GENERAL QUARTERS, GENERAL QUARTERS! ALL HANDS MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS! THIS IS NOT A DRILL, I SAY AGAIN, THIS IS NOT A DRILL!"_

 **XXXXX**

 **O'Neill Air Force Base, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0804 (Four minutes after contact)**

 **1st Lieutenant Link "Zelda" Kuang**

Zelda was bored.

He was laying on a cot, staring at the ceiling of the ready room, trying to figure out what he could do to occupy his time. He supposed he should have been working on his after-action report from yesterday, but honestly, that sounded worse than just lying there, counting the ceiling tiles. Odessa was on the other side of the room, playing poker with the guys from one of the other flights in the squadron, and ideally Zelda would have loved to join them, however he had blown all his credits on drinks last night and considering he owed everyone in the squadron money, no one was willing to spot him a loan. So, there he was, lying on his cot, twiddling his thumbs, waiting for something to happen.

This was why he hated QRA duty.

He sighed. Maybe he really should take a nap. Because really, what else could he do?

"Hey Zelda, I'm putting in an order for breakfast from Tippy's. You want anything?"

Zelda turned his head to look at the speaker. It was the newest member of the squadron, a guy named Betros, who had joined the squadron about a month ago. He wasn't a complete novice as he had flown AC-220 "Vultures" for the Colonial Militia before joining the UNSC Air Force, but due to his relative inexperience with fighter jets, he had been assigned as Bellum's wing mate. He was an okay flyer who was at least capable of keeping up with the more experienced members of the squadron, but as a rookie who had never flown a combat mission against either the Covenant or the Insurgency, he had yet earn the right to a call sign.

Zelda let out a groan. "Tippy's?" he asked. "We always order from fucking Tippy's. Seriously, there's like, fifteen places that serve breakfast within a ten klick radius. Why we always got to go to Tippy's?"

He could see Betros rolling his eyes. "Well, where the hell do you want to order from then?"

Zelda considered the question. "I'm thinking –"

 _ **BRANK! BRAYNK! BRAYNK!**_

" _SCRAMBLE, SCRAMBLE, SCRAMBLE. I SAY AGAIN. SCRAMBLE, SCRAMBLE, SCRAMBLE."_

Zelda was on the ground, running for the hanger before his brain could even fully comprehend what was going on. He darted out of the door, joined by everyone else in the ready room, and then flat out sprinted towards the hanger that housed his Broadsword.

Inside, the flight crew was already going about disconnecting fuel lines, recharging cables, and removing red tag items. Coming to a stop by his bird, Zelda grabbed his helmet and put it on before raising his arms as one of his mechanics quickly patted him down to make sure his vacuum suit was sealed and his vest was secured, before sprinting up the ladder and throwing himself into his cockpit. Hitting a button, Zelda strapped himself in as cockpit canopy lowered shut. He plugged his oxygen tube into the plane as a loud _HISS_ filled the air as his cockpit sealed itself.

Inside, Zelda thumbed the ignition button. His bird, which had been sitting on standby mode, instantly came to life. Every single control panel in the cockpit lit up, and his HUD winked into existence.

" _ALL PERSONNEL, WE ARE AT TIME: PLUS TWO MINUTES."_

Zelda swore. They needed to be up in the air in seven minutes or less. He had to hurry up.

"Come on, come on," he muttered to himself as he drummed his fingers impatiently against his side-stick as the doors to the hanger began to roll open, and his ground crew hurriedly removed the wheel chocks from his landing gear. As soon as he received the all-clear signal, Zelda pushed down on the throttle, and his Broadsword began to roll out of the hanger towards the runways.

"O'Neill Control Tower, this is Omega-6," Zelda said into his radio as soon as he was cleared of the hanger. "Requesting instructions for launch, over."

" _Omega-6, Control Tower. Proceed along highlighted route to runway three."_

An orange marked path suddenly appeared on Zelda's HUD. "Copy that Control Tower, Omega-6 proceeding to runway three."

Zelda began to drive his Broadsword down the highlighted path. As he did, he glanced around. All around him, Broadswords were emerging from their hangers and falling in line behind him. He couldn't help but allow a smile to grace his face. It was always a point of pride for him when he was the first one out of the hanger and into the air.

Zelda made the final turn onto runway three, keying his microphone as he did. "Control Tower, Omega-6. Requesting permission for takeoff, over?"

" _Omega-6, you're cleared for takeoff. I say again. You're cleared for takeoff."_

Zelda jammed down on the throttle.

His Broadsword began to rattle and shake, and the whine of his engines rapidly drowned out all other sounds as power surged through his fighter. Through his wind shields, he could see the snowy landscape rolling by as he started down the runway, quickly picking up speed. Punching in his afterburners, he yanked back on the stick once he had achieved enough lift and his Broadsword began to climb and gained altitude. He thumbed a button and heard a mute _thunk_ as his landing gear fully retracted.

Maintaining his speed, Zelda continued to climb until he had reached about twelve thousand meters before leveling out. He was quickly joined by the rest of squadron.

" _Omega Flight, radio check, sound off in sequence,"_ he heard Bellum order over the radio.

" _Omega-2, standing by."_ That was Betros.

" _Omega-3, standing by."_

" _Omega-4, standing by."_

" _Omega-5, standing by."_ That was Odessa.

Zelda keyed in his mic. "Omega-6, standing by," he announced, then released the talk button and leaned back as he waited for all twelve members of the squadron to finish sounding off.

" _This is Omega-Leader, all Omega Flight fighters standing by,"_ Bellum finally announced. _"All pilots, link up with your wing mates, then form up on me."_

Zelda banked his Broadsword to the left so that he was just behind Odessa on his right. The pair of them then fell in formation behind Bellum and Betros.

"So," Zelda cheerfully announced over SQUADCOM as the squadron fell into formation. "Anyone want to tell me where the fire is? Don't get me wrong, I love flying just as much as the next guy, it's just I've got about fifteen thousand kilograms worth of ordnance that's begging to be expended."

" _I'm getting briefed by the AWACS right now Zelda, so shut up,"_ Bellum snapped.

"Alright, jeez, I was just asking," Zelda muttered to himself as he busied himself checking his air radar to make sure he wasn't about to jumped from behind. To his surprise, he noticed a large number of aircraft taking off from O'Neill Air Base. The Air Force was launching more than one fighter squadron? Then his radio began buzzing, indicating he was getting a message on his private channel from Odessa.

" _Hey, look to the west,"_ Odessa said as soon as Zelda switched over. _"Do the Cunt Munchers have an exercise today? Looks like they're mobilizing all their gunships."_

Zelda looked over his right shoulder. They were currently flying by a Colonial Militia Air Force base and the entire airfield was covered with what looked like every single air frame in their possession. Activating the zoom feature on his helmet, Zelda could see Falcons, Sparrowhawks, and even a couple Vultures, all prepping for takeoff.

"Huh. That's weird," Zelda commented. "Hey, did you check behind us? Looks like Flanker and Tornado Squadrons are also getting launched. What the fuck is going on?"

Before Odessa could respond, Bellum's voice cut through the channel.

" _Okay, listen up Omega,"_ she barked and to Zelda's surprise, he could just barely pick up the hint of… was that fear in her voice? _"We got our orders."_

" _Where we headed?"_ one of the other flight leaders asked before Zelda could.

" _Low orbit. We're rendezvous with the_ _UNSC_ Trenchard."

"Low orbit?" Zelda blurted out in astonishment before he could stop himself. "Why would we…" He trailed off as realization struck him. Low orbit, the Air Force trying to get every single airframe off the ground? There could only be one possible explanation. "Oh."

" _Yeah, 'oh,'"_ Bellum said and this time, there was no mistaking the tension in her voice. _"We're dealing with a Winter Contingency situation here. Ladies and gentlemen, get your game faces on: the Covenant are here."_

 **XXXXX**

 **Camp Hoxha, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0807 (Seven minutes after contact)**

 **Private Marcus Olsen**

"And this here is going to be your dorm," Dresden cheerfully announced.

Marcus walked into the room and took a look around. It was surprisingly comfortable looking room. His barracks in both basic and AIT had reminded him of a prison cell: rather Spartan looking, with a lot of cinderblocks and concrete. All it had been missing were the bars on the windows. This room, however, reminded him a lot of the college dorms he had seen back when he was still visiting colleges. The walls were covered in drywall, all the furniture was made out of wood, carpet on the ground. There were even blinds on the windows. All in all, a rather pleasant looking place.

Of course, to be fair, they could have given Marcus a sleeping bag and a pup tent and placed him in the middle of an open field and he would have been happy. At this point, Marcus was just glad to finally be allowed to settle in.

When Dresden had brought him to this building two hours ago, Marcus had thought his dorm room was the first place they were going to go. As it turned out, he still had a lot of processing to go through. For starters, he had to first visit the company headquarters where another bored looking soldier had to double check his transfer orders and personal information. Then Marcus had to fill out a bunch of paperwork. Then he had to sit through some sort of briefing and orientation. Then fill out more paperwork. He would have thought he would have to do all that stuff down at battalion reception before he got assigned to a unit but apparently not.

After he was done with his briefing and orientation, Marcus had to go down to the base HQ in order to receive his CAC, or common access card, because apparently without one, he wouldn't be able to access any of the buildings or buy any food at the mess hall. Why the Army just didn't use a hand or retinal scanners, Marcus had no idea.

After he had received his CAC, Marcus then had to go to the armory, where he was issued all of his armor, his equipment, and then a whole bunch of other stuff, half of which he didn't even know what it was for. Then, after that, Marcus had to go back to company supply in order to receive some bed linens, some toiletries, and some other crap.

Finally, after all that, Marcus was brought to his dorm room where he was finally able to put his stuff down. All he wanted to do at this point was take a nap but unfortunately, Dresden still needed to give him a tour of the base after which, they would need to head down to the motor pool where Marcus would met the rest of his platoon. Fuck.

"You'll be sharing the room with Private First Class William Orlović, whom I think you met at battalion reception?" Dresden was saying.

Marcus absentmindedly nodded his head. The name sounded familiar; Marcus was pretty sure he was the guy who had checked him in hours ago.

"Well, that's about it." Marcus noticed Dresden glancing at his watch. "I know I need to give you a tour of the base, but if you don't mind, I think we should go down to the mess hall. I don't know about you, but I'm getting kind of hungry."

Marcus brightened at those words. He hadn't had a chance to eat or drink anything since he landed at the Novak Intercontinental Airport on the outskirts of the city of Byzas some three hours ago, and with all the running around he'd been doing, he was ready for a hot breakfast.

"Go ahead and dump your stuff on your bed," Dresden suggested as he walked for the door. "You'll have time to – "

"wwwweeeeeeerrrrrrrrnnnnNNNNN **NNNNNNNN** **NNNNNNN** **NNNNNNNNNN** **NNNNNN** **!** "

"What the hell is that?" Marcus asked, startled, as the bone chilling shriek of an alarm filled the air. He glanced over at Dresden, only to see a look of concern pass over his face.

"That's the base alarm. But I have no idea why they're sounding it right now; I didn't see any notices about them testing it today," Dresden explained as he walked over to the window and lifted the blinds. "What the hell?"

Marcus joined him by the window. The window overlooked one of the base entrances, allowing Marcus to see the base guards were freaking out. The ones on duty were hastily shutting the gate and raising traffic barriers, and to Marcus' alarm, looked like they were loading their machine guns. As he watched, more guards came pouring out of a nearby building, many of whom were still throwing on their gear and loading their guns.

"What's going on?" Marcus nervously asked. "Are we under attack?" he jokingly suggested. He glanced over at Dresden, expecting him to at least crack a smile at Marcus' naivety, however his face was drawn and grim.

"Get your armor on," he said instead.

"What?"

"Get your armor on," Dresden repeated as he headed for the door. "I got to get mine from my room, but you stay here until I get back!"

"Wha..? Sir, what the fuck is going on!?" Marcus blurted out, Dresden's attitude not doing a thing to calm him down.

"Stop asking questions and get your armor on!" Dresden snapped and startled, Marcus moved to obey.

As he slid on his groin protection, one last desperate thought entered his mind. "Hey Sarge!"

Dresden poked his head through the door.

"Is this some sort of new guy hazing ritual?" Marcus desperately asked, hoping upon hope that was all this was.

The expression on Dresden's face instantly dashed that hope.

"I don't think it is," was all he said before disappearing down the hall.

Marcus stood there, gapping at the spot where Dresden had been standing, before the sound of dozens of people running up the stairs caused him to snap out of it and he hurried began throwing on the rest of his gear. As he frantically worked, one thought kept bouncing around inside his mind:

'Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.'

 **XXXXX**

 **Graham Quarry, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0810 (Ten minutes after contact)**

 **Sergeant Tariq Helmand**

"Okay, ease her forward a bit! That's it, come on. And... STOP!"

With a slight groaning of metal, Lillian came to an abrupt halt as Corona slammed on the brakes.

"Put her in park and then get your ass out here Rook," Tariq ordered as he picked up his wrench. It had taken far longer than it should had, but Lillian's track was finally fixed and back in alignment. All he had to do now was tighten the bolt and pray this stupid FNG didn't throw the track again.

"You hold it in place and I'll tighten," Tariq commanded as Corona joined him on the ground next to the track. "You ready?"

"Yes," Corona announced as he slipped his wrench over the other end of the bolt and braced himself.

Tariq quickly tightened the bolt as much he possibly could, before giving the track a good whack to make sure there wasn't too much slack. Everything seemed alright so Tariq turned to Corona and toss him his wrench.

"We're all set," he declared. "Get that shit cleaned up and let's get ready to move out."

Corona nodded, then scampered away to put the tools away. While he did that, Tariq reached down for the talk button on his radio and keyed it, but jerked his head away as he was assaulted with a bunch of feedback. He turned around.

Walking towards him was Noble, radio in hand, and a pissed off look on her face. Tariq internally cringed and mentally sighed. Now what did he do? Was she pissed about how long it had taken him to fix that track? Because if she was, then that was complete bullshit. The track would have gotten fixed faster if he had a crew that actually knew what they were doing but because he didn't, he pretty much had to do everything himself.

Tariq opened his mouth to explain all that, but before he could get a word in, Noble lifted her hand and stopped him.

"Save it Sergeant," she commanded, then gestured at him and Corona. "I need you two to drop whatever the fuck you're doing and come with me right now."

Without another word, she turned around and walked away. Mystified, Tariq exchanged a puzzled look with Corona before shrugging his shoulders and began trudging through the snow behind her.

She led them towards the battalion commander's APC, where it looked like everyone from the battalion, including all the tank crew members from both tank companies as well as all the infantrymen from the mechanized infantry company had gathered. Tariq immediately set out to find Chenko, and located him standing nearby. Coming to a stop next to him, Tariq nudged him to get his attention, then shot him a questioning look while gesturing at the assembled group. Chenko shook his head. He didn't know what was going on either.

"3rd Battalion, listen up!" Tariq heard the battalion sergeant major scream out, and he strained his head to spot the man over the shoulders of everyone else standing in front of him. "I want the first three rows of soldiers to take a seat so everyone can see the CO. Next three rows, take a knee. Last three rows, remain standing!"

Murmurs broke out as the assembled mass proceeded to do just that. As the soldiers in front of him knelt, Tariq was finally able to see the battalion commanding officer and his staff standing at the head of the group.

"Eyes on the CO!"

The CO took a step forward. "Listen up!" he barked. "As of ten minutes ago, this entire exercise was terminated! As of right now, we are no longer in training mode!"

Tariq's confusion deepened. This field exercise was scheduled to last a full week. They were barely three days into it. There was no way they could have accomplished the exercise's objectives in that time frame.

Nearby, Tariq could hear a couple of replacements whispering to each other, speculating if the early termination of the exercise was because the CO wanted to give them the rest of the week off. Tariq knew that wasn't going to be the case. The battalion commander had been with the unit long before the division had been deployed to Draco III and back then, he had gotten a reputation for being a bit of a puppet: he did what he was told, when he was told, no matter what, even if it didn't make a whole lot of sense. So, if the CO had been told to lead a field exercise for exactly seven days, he would lead a field exercise for exactly seven days, and not a minute less. Unless something had happened...

Instead of answering any of the questions that were being voiced, the CO turned to the battalion S-6, who lifted a radio receiver. The entire battalion fell silent as the S-6 boosted the gain, allowing everyone to hear what was being broadcasted.

" _-ncy. This is Actium Defense Command broadcasting across all military channels: Winter Contingency. I say again, Winter Contingency. This is -"_

The message continued to repeat itself but Tariq was no longer listening; immediately after hearing the message, his blood had turned cold.

'No... it couldn't be...'

Next to him, Chenko was frantically slapping his arm, trying to get his attention.

"Wait a minute," he was saying. "Did she just fucking say...?"

"She did," Tariq confirmed, feeling numb.

"Tell me this isn't fucking happening!"

The battalion CO spoke up, his booming voice drawing all attention back to him. "For those of you who were on Draco III, you know exactly what that message means. For you replacements, I'm sorry to say, that message means you're going to see the Covenant up close and personal a lot sooner than anticipated. Ladies and gentlemen, it would appear that the war followed us home: Covenant presence in this system has been confirmed. We're going back to war."

Silence followed his grim announcement. For the veterans, it was the realization they were about to drop back into hell again. For the replacements, it was because of the fear and uncertainty of what was about to occur not just to them but to their families and their homes.

"As of right now, there's not a lot of information," the CO continued. "We still don't know when, where, or how big the invasion force is. In fact, at this point, we don't even know if it _IS_ an invasion force: the Covenant could very well just glass the planet and move on without once committing to a surface attack. However, for the time being, we are to assume they will. So right now, our immediate mission objective is full rearmament. We will proceed west, to a nearby Colonial Militia base, where we will be able to arm our vehicles."

"There's one last thing I want to mention before we mount up," the CO declared. "I know there's been a lot of gripping and bitching about the replacements in the last few weeks, as well as a number of hazing incidents the Sergeant Major and I have had to deal with. I'm putting out a blanket order: all that shit stops right now. Everyone, look at the soldier to your left."

Tariq obeyed and noticed Corona was standing beside him.

"Now everyone, look to your right."

Tariq did as he was told. Chenko was standing there beside him, looking pale.

"As of right now, the only people we can depend on are the soldiers standing next to us. We're all in this together. Take care of your teammates so that they can take care of you. Is that understood?"

"Yes sir," Tariq murmured along with everyone else in the battalion.

"Good. Sergeant Major?"

The battalion Sergeant Major took a step forward. "Battalion will now proceed at top speed to the armory. Convoy will be Joker Company, Lima Company, battalion HHC, and Kilo Company following up the rear. Battalion! Mount up and move out!"

 **XXXXX**

 **Town of Aquia, Actium** _ **  
**_ **May 6, 2545  
0830 (Thiry minutes after contact)**

 **Officer Selene Riddle**

 _ **BUZZ!**_

Selene jerked awake, nearly giving her pet cat, who had been sleeping peacefully on her chest, a heart attack. Her cat let out an offended _mrow_ , before leaping to the ground and sauntering off, but not before giving Selene a disapproving glare.

"Sorry Fig Mewton," Selene called out after him, trying to catch her breath as adrenaline circulated through her veins.

Her communicator let out another angry buzz and irritated, Selene grabbed it. As she did, she glanced at the clock. She had gotten home at about seven o'clock and without bothering to take off her gear or her uniform, had immediately thrown herself onto the couch and crashed. It was now eight thirty, which meant she had only been asleep for an hour and a half at most. What the fuck.

She looked at who was trying to contact her. It was the office and for a moment, Selene was oh so tempted to ignore the message and go back to sleep. Unfortunately, the message was from dispatch and tagged 'emergency,' so Selene had to open it.

Rubbing her eyes, she accessed the message and scanned it. It simply read, "All officers and detectives are hereby ordered to report back to their stations."

Selene frowned. Did that include off-duty officers? If so, that would be a bunch of bull. She just got off work!

Well, there was only one way to find out.

Pulling up her contact list, she called up Kingsley. While she waited for the call to connect, she got up and headed to the kitchen to get a cup of water. While she was there, Fig began rubbing against her leg, begging for attention which Selene obliged. As she stood there, petting her cat, she abruptly connected with Kingsley.

 _"Riddle?"_ Kingsley said, sounding distracted.

"Hey LT," Selene said, yawning. "Hey, I just got the message from dispatch and I want to check with you: does this include off-duty officers?"

 _"Yeah, it does. I need everyone back right now,"_ Kingsley reported.

Selene couldn't stop the groan from escaping her mouth. "Oh, come on Lieutenant, I just clocked out less than two hours ago. You can't -"

 _"Selene, listen to me very carefully,"_ Kingsley interrupted _. "About half an hour ago, the UNSC military, the Colonial Militia, and the Province Militia all went on full alert and are currently, as we speak, in the middle of a full scale mobilization. Furthermore, I'm getting early reports that there appears to be some fighting going on near or around the planet of Tenedos. The Actium government is about to hold a press conference any minute now, but its clear something is going down_ **right now** _. I need all my officers back at the station, thirty minutes ago."_

"O-okay," Selene said, confused and slightly worried. "But you know I don't have a car, right? I take the maglev train, so it's going to take me some time to get there."

 _"Just get here as fast as you can."_

"10-4," Selene said, then terminated the connection.

"Sorry Fig," she told her cat as she set him down on the ground. "Looks like I got to go. I'll be back as soon as I can."

Looking around her apartment, Selene thought about what she needed. She was already dressed and ready to go, and she never took her equipment off her belt when she was at home. The only thing she could think she would need was in her bedroom.

She ran into her bedroom and reached under the bed, pulling out a small safe. Putting her thumb on the scanner, she unlocked it and pulled out a pistol. It was her off duty piece, a Caveira PX40 chambered in 10mm Auto. She didn't pull it out very often, mostly because this province was surprisingly stingy when it came to issuing out firearms licenses and she could get in serious trouble just for having it on her in public, even as a cop, but something in Kingsley's voice that made her feel like she was going to need it.

Making sure she had a couple loaded magazines, she stuck her pistol and holster onto her belt, grabbed her jacket, then headed outside.

Out in the hall it was eerily quiet. A number of her neighbors were soldiers who she knew worked the night shift at the local base, and normally at this time they would have the TV or radio on, blaring at max volume. But right now, there was nothing. No bass, no screaming, no simulated gunfire. It was kind of creepy to be honest and Selene hurriedly rushed to the lobby.

She burst outside and started to dash for the bus stop when the roar of a jet engine flying by overhead made her pause and look up. What she saw astounded her.

"What the hell..." she murmured.

Overhead, dozens upon dozens of military fighters were passing by. There were so many of them, it was like watching a flock of birds heading south for the winter. It kind reminded her of the pictures she had seen of World War II back in school, of all the Allied bombers headed towards Europe. She didn't think the military had that many planes in the general area.

As she watched them fly by, she happened to notice one little detail: all the planes were headed towards low orbit.

"Shit," she whispered to herself. She didn't know what was going on, but she did know one thing: she needed to get back to the station.

Now.

 **XXXXX**

 **Somewhere in UNSC Controlled Space  
May 6, 2545  
0850 (Fifty minutes after contact)**

 **Private First Class Adel Savaschi**

"Hey, you the guys the ones washing the dishes?"

Adel looked up in time to one of the Swabbies come walking into the room with another cart load of dishes.

"Are fucking kidding me right now?" Adel disgustedly exclaimed. "X just went to go get another cart and you're here dropping off a third one? What the fuck!?"

"Sorry buddy," the Swabbie said with a shrug. "I was told to bring this here. Wasn't my call."

"This is fucking bullshit!" Adel told Sam as the Swabbie left the room. "How long are we supposed to be doing this shit for anyways? This is so fucking stupid. I signed up to be a Marine and kill aliens, not be some slave for some dickless motherfuckers!"

"Then maybe you should have kept your insubordination in check, Private."

Adel jumped and turned around in time to see the dumb motherfucker who had forced him into this situation in the first place come walking in.

"You're reaping what you sew," the PO1 smugly said, and Adel was oh so tempted to deck the man and wipe that smug smirk off his stupid face, but he refrained himself. Fucking pussy probably had a glass jaw and would probably start crying if Adel broke it. "You're getting what you deserve, soldier."

" _Soldier!?_ " Adel angrily exclaimed. "I'm a **Marine**! Not some pansy-assed Army pus -"

"There something you need Petty Officer?" Sam interrupted, and Adel couldn't help but be disgusted by the servile tone Sam had adopted.

"Just checking to see your progress Corporal," the Swabbie said as he walked over to the pots and pans Adel had been spending all morning cleaning.

As soon as the Swabbie's back was turned though, Sam viciously spat in his direction. Sam was dipping at the moment, so his spit looked particularly nasty.

"Fucking asshole," Adel heard Sam mutter, and Adel nodded in satisfaction. It was nice to see Sam still had his dignity. That was, at least until Sam whirled on him.

"And you! What the fuck is your problem? Are you trying to get into more trouble? And more importantly, get me into more trouble?"

Adel was incredulous. "What? I shouldn't have to listen to that fucking pussy! If he didn't have the balls to join the real military, then why should I have to stand here and listen to whatever bullshit comes out of his mouth?"

It was Sam's turn to look incredulous. "That's not... what the fu... god damn, what the fuck is wrong with my Corps if they let a dumbass motherfucker like you graduate from boot camp!? Back in the Old Corps, the DIs would have kicked the shit out of you if you acted the way you're acting now!"

"'Back in the Old Corps?' You're only five years older than me," Adel darkly muttered under his breath.

"Private!"

Adel jumped at the shout and looked around wildly. Near the door to the room, the limp-dick Swabbie had picked up a pan and was inspecting it carefully. Seeing Adel's attention was on him, he lifted the pan and started waving it through the air. "You wash this?"

"Yeah," Adel replied aggressively. "What of it?"

Without warning, the Swabbie tossed the pan right at Adel, who just barely managed to catch it before it hit him in the face.

"You called that washed?" the Swabbie barked. "There's still spots of grease all over the surface. In fact, all these pots and pans are still filthy! I know you Marines are dumb, but you think you would be able to handle a simple task like washing some cookware? Do it all over again!"

Adel's temper flared and he was about to let the Swabbie know what he really thought when –

 _SLAM!_

"HEY GUYS – oh, sorry Petty Officer," X quickly said as he burst into the room, nearly running right into the Swabbie.

"Be careful!" the Swabbie squeaked as he leapt out of the way. "What exactly has gotten you so agitated Marine?"

X glanced at Sam, who nodded.

"I just ran into Staff Sergeant Reynolds. You know, from 3rd Platoon?" X explained. "He just told me our orders have changed: we're no longer going to Newsaka."

That caught Adel's attention. "Really?" he excitedly asked.

"Yeah, word just came through on the radio: the Covenant have invade another colony!"

Sam's head snapped up. "What? Where? Which one?"

"Actium, in the Ambracia System. They need reinforcements, bad. The entire Expeditionary Strike Group is getting diverted!"

"The Ambracia System? Where the fuck is that?" Adel heard Sam ask, but Adel was no longer paying attention. He was doing his best not to start cheering.

As part of the 88th Marine Expeditionary Unit, Adel's battalion was getting deployed to Newsaka to help with the fighting going on there. Only, Adel hadn't been looking forward to it mainly because, from what he had heard, most of the fighting was already over. All that was left were small pockets of defeated Covenant soldiers running about, most of whom would probably end up killing themselves before the 88th MEU arrived.

Adel had been super pissed when he had first heard the news. He had wanted to have been the first kid on his block to have a confirmed kill, but how would that have been possible if all the Covenant were dead before he got there? But now it sounded like he was about to not only get his chance, he was also going to get his chance to be the hero he was supposed to be. And everyone who laughed at him in high school, boot camp, and SOI would finally be able to see what sort of badass warrior he was.

Adel managed to bring his excitement under control long enough to hear X saying, "We're heading straight to the planet right now. They say the ETA is maybe three, four hours, but the Sergeant Major wants all Marines to start getting ready for combat."

"Well then," Sam declared as he tossed the sponge he was holding to the side. "No point in sticking around here. Let's go Marines."

Adel started smirking at the startled expression on the Swabbie's face. "Hang on a second," he began, but Sam immediately cut him off with a raised hand.

"With all due respect Petty Officer, you heard what my Marine said. And I don't care if you're a Swabbie or not: in my book, a Sergeant Major's orders override a Petty Officer 1st Class's any day of the week." Sam leaned in close. "If you got a problem with that, bring it up with him because my Marines? We've got a war to prepare for."

Without another a word, Sam marched right out of the room, with X and Adel following close behind. Once out of the room, Adel finally couldn't stop himself any longer, and began laughing out loud. He was going to war and was able to get out of a shit job early?

This was just like Christmas.


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Note: So this chapter took me a long time to write. It didn't occur to me until after I started writing, but this is the first time I've ever attempted to write a space combat scene, so I didn't really know what I was doing. I couldn't figure out whether or not I wanted to go a more "realistic approach" or a more "sci-fi approach" and ultimately, I think I ended in a somewhat awkward spot in-between. Because of that, I'm not sure how this chapter turned out. That's also why this chapter is a bit shorter than usual.

Also, something I want to point out before anyone gets confused: this chapter and the next several chapters will no longer be in chronological order. I will be jumping forward and backwards in time as I jump from perspective to perspective. For example, the events in this chapter are taking place **at the same time** Tariq and his follow tankers (the UNSC Army tankers) are being informed about the Covenant invasion. On the other hand, at this point, neither Selene (the civilian police officer) nor Adel (the UNSC Marine) have been informed.

It's going to get a little bit confusing, and I apologize for that, but hopeful I'll be able to make it clear for everyone.

* * *

 **Chapter 3**

 **UNSC** _ **Katara Pass**_ **(1)** **(CA-747), Battle Group Tethong** _ **  
**_ **Interplanetary Space, Ambracian System**  
 **May 6, 2545  
0811 (Eleven minutes after contact)**

 **Rear Admiral Pramod Tethong**

"BRACE FOR EVASIVE MANEUVERS!"

Rear Admiral Pramod Tethong gritted his teeth as his flagship, the UNSC _Katara Pass_ , ignited her starboard emergency thrusters, throwing the entire 90,000 metric ton cruiser to the side, the acceleration throwing him hard against his restraints. The minor discomfort was worth it though because barely a second later, a plasma torpedo came streaking in, missing the _Katara Pass_ by a few dozen meters, but nevertheless still detonated due to its close proximity. The entire ship shook as she rode through the ensuing explosion.

"Damage report!" Captain Bakshi, commander of the _Katara Pass_ barked out.

"Minimal damage to the outer hull, but the explosion knocked out the automated controls for the point defense turrets on our forward and starboard bow!"

"Get damage control parties down there to repair the damage and have some gunner's mates on standby to man those turrets in case they can't, on the double!"

"And pick up the rate of fire on the main cannons!" Tethong interjected. "I don't care if we're outside of effective range for the MACs! Make that destroyer chose between getting a good lock on us or risk taking a direct hit!"

"Aye sir!"

"Ryukyu, give me a sitrep on the fleet!"

Tethong's aide, a smart AI by the name of Ryukyu, immediately appeared by his side.

"The UNSC _Breanne's Creek_ (2) is reporting power loss to both her primary fusion drives, but her captain has confirmed the ship will be able to maintain her position in the formation," he reported. "However the UNSC _18 Scorpii_ (3) took a direct hit to her forward bow, and I've lost all contact with her bridge. Furthermore, I'm detecting multiple breaches on her hull and she appears to be venting atmosphere."

"Put it on my screen!"

An image of one of Tethong's escort ships, a _Charon_ -class frigate, instantly appeared on his tactical display. It was just like Ryukyu stated: the ship had taken a direct hit, probably from a plasma torpedo, to her bow, which had instantly boiled away her armored plating then melted its way through several decks. Secondary explosions were erupting all across the surface of the ship and there appeared to be some sort of green mist emerging from her stern which Tethong recognized as coolant for the main reactor. Her engines appeared to have shut down and although she continued to advance at high speeds, Tethong knew it was because they were in space and not because of anything her crew was doing. The _18 Scorpii_ was clearly dead in the water.

"Dammit! Alright, tap into the _18 Scorpii'_ s internal intercom system and order the crew to abandon ship!" Tethong barked, even as escape pods began ejecting from the ship. "Have the _Gladius_ (4) and the _Sagan Blue_ (4) come about to pick up survivors, then order them to jump to Actium; those corvettes aren't going to help us very much right now!

"Sir."

"Order the fleet to increase their speeds: red line their reactors if they have to! We have to close the distance and get within maximum effective range of our missiles before the Covenant take out any more of our ships!" Tethong roared, before turning his attention back to the battle at hand, seething.

The _18 Scorpii_ was the second ship Tethong had lost already and given the fact he only had fifteen warships assigned to his battle group, he couldn't afford to lose anymore. He wished there was something he could do other than rush headlong at the Covenant but unfortunately, that just wasn't possible: out here in interplanetary space, it was simply impossible to hide a fleet consisting of one _Marathon_ -class heavy cruiser, seven frigates of various classes, four _Halberd_ -class destroyers and two _Gladius_ -class heavy corvettes. Nor could they try to engage the Covenant from afar: while there was theoretically no maximum range to projectile weaponry in space, Covenant electronic countermeasures and point defense systems were such that most anti-ship missiles would be intercepted or destroyed megameters before impact, and MAC rounds were unguided so all Covenant ships had to do was move out of the way. No, the only way Tethong could hope to do battle against the Covenant was to get into the space equivalent of "knife fighting" range and essentially engage the Covenant at point blank range.

Of course, in order to accomplish that, Tethong and his battle group had to run through a gauntlet of fire…

"VAMPIRE VAMPIRE VAMPIRE! Incoming plasma torpedoes bearing two five six!"

"Launch chaff and standby to ignite port side emergency thrusters!" Bakshi yelled from her seat.

Through his display, Tethong could see three metal objects launching from the _Katara Pass_ at high speeds in different directions. As soon as each chaff was about a kilometer away, they all began emitting a high magnetic signature, one that would hopefully cause the plasma torpedoes to lock onto them, and not the ship.

In the distance, Tethong could see three plasma torpedoes come streaking in, easily seen because of the vibrant red contrails they were leaving in their wake. Two of them immediately broke away and began chasing after one of the decoys, which detonated in a brief but violent flash of light as the torpedoes hit. The third torpedo however, continued straight forward.

"Standby to ignite port side emergency thrusters!" Bakshi barked out and the ship's helmsman quickly moved his hand over the ignition button. "Standby..."

Tethong nervously licked his lips as the torpedo continued to head straight for the _Katara Pass_.

"Standby..." Bakshi ordered. "Act -"

Without warning, the third torpedo abruptly broke away and began chasing after one of the decoys instead. There was a bloody explosion as the torpedo hit home, but the _Katara Pass_ was unscathed.

Tethong let out a mute sigh of relief, but he knew they couldn't keep this up.

"Ryukyu, how soon until we reach maximum effective range!?" Tethong demanded to know.

"Three minutes sir!"

"Is there any way to -"

Tethong broke off as he just happened to look up in time to see one of his destroyers, the UNSC _Martel_ (5), take a trio of plasma torpedoes amidships. The explosion literally cut the vessel in half, sending both halves of the ship spiraling in two different directions. There were clearly no survivors.

"Dammit," Tethong spat. "Okay, we're close enough! Ryukyu, scramble the fighters! All ships, lock on to that destroyer with all batteries and open fire!"

His display instantly lit up as all remaining ships in his battle group opened up with everything they had on the Covenant. Orange-red tracers, light gray contrails, and brilliant white flashes filled the area as his ships unload hundreds of 50mm shells, Archer missiles, and magnetically accelerated ferric-tungsten projectiles at their target, a single Covenant _CPV-_ class heavy destroyer, crossing the distance between the two fleets in a matter of seconds.

The results were… less than satisfactory.

The MAC rounds were the first to arrive, being the fastest of all projectiles. Despite their speed, the Covenant destroyer was able to deftly maneuver around all but two of the rounds, which struck the destroyer's energy shields causing them to light up, but otherwise causing no other damage. In the meantime, pulse laser turrets located on the dorsal side of the ship's hull came to life, instantly shooting and destroying half the Archer missiles long before they could reach, while the other half of the Archer missiles abruptly veered off course, no doubt the result of Covenant electronic countermeasures. Finally, the 50mm shells struck home but given their small size, they did little to no damage to the kilometer and a half long ship.

"Second volley!" Tethong fanatically ordered. "All ships, fire when ready!"

His fleet fired again. This time, having fired from a bit closer position, the results were more noticeable. At least five MAC rounds struck home while about a third of the Archer missiles were also able to hit the destroyer's shield, causing it to not only light up, but flicker as they began to lose strength. Unfortunately, that was not something Tethong could take advantage of as the Covenant quickly began to return fire.

"Evasive maneuvers! Hard to port!" Tethong screamed as the Covenant destroyer lit up with return fire.

Tethong was slammed against his seat as the _Katara Pass_ began making a hard turn a second too late to avoid Covenant plasma fire. The entire ship shook as she was struck by several plasma cannon bolts, each bolt making a loud _CLANK_ noise that echoed through the entire ship as they struck home. At once, reports from around the ship began filtering in

"Multiple hits across the hull -"

"- plating in sections Alpha, Charlie, and -"

"Both MACs are green across the board however missile turrets Item, Echo, Yankee -"

"- reading multiple breaches in the outer hull -"

"Captain Bakshi! Engineering is reporting the cooling system to the primary fusion reactors has been damage! Chief Engineer Luray is saying we can no longer run the reactors at full power otherwise we run the risk of an overload!"

"Flush the coolant into the reactors, then switch over to secondary systems," Bakshi ordered. "Tell Lieutenant Luray to get his crews working on a temporary fix, I want those reactors back online as soon as possible! In the meantime, divert power from the main engines to the MACs, target the plasma beam emitter on that destroyer and fire when ready!"

As updates from the crew came streaming in, damage reports from the rest of the fleet were also filtering through Tethong display. Things were looking grim.

Plasma cannon fire was raking across the hull of the _Breanne's Creek_ , causing the entire ship to be awashed with explosions, though her armor appeared to holding as she continued to maneuver and return fire. At the same time, a series of plasma torpedoes and plasma cannon bolts simultaneously struck the UNSC _Oberon_ (5), a _Stalwart_ -class frigate, which disintegrated with all hands lost. Massive amounts of energy started swirling on the underside of the Covenant destroyer's bow before a single beam of blue-white lanced out, spearing another one of Tethong's escort frigates right in the stern, neatly separating the frigates main thrusters from the rest of the ship. To the crew's credit, they continued to unload on the Covenant, unfazed by the near death experience. Meanwhile, the Covenant appeared to be in a fierce duel with the three remaining destroyers from Tethong's destroyer squadron, with pulse laser being fired at a frantic pace as the UNSC destroyers advanced on the Covenant destroyer from above.

"Admiral?" a voice sounded in Tethong's ear.

"What is it Ryukyu?" he distractedly asked, wincing as the _Katara Pass_ took another series of hits, though her armor continued to hold.

"Long range sensors are indicating the main body of the Covenant fleet is slowing down. They appear to be hanging back. However, I am detecting the signatures of three more Covenant warships on approach."

"On screen!"

A composite image of the Covenant fleet appeared on his display. Like Ryukyu reported, the main body of the Covenant invasion force, a single _CCS_ -class battlecruisers and her escorts, had come to a dead stop thousands of kilometers away from the fighting, safely out of range of the UNSC. It was a bit unusual, as that single battlecruiser had enough firepower to reduce Tethong's entire fleet to molten slag in a single volley, which led Tethong to suspect that ship were filled with something valuable, probably an entire invasion force, but whatever the case was, Tethong was just glad he was somehow managing to accomplish his objective of stalling the Covenant advance. His main concern however, was the single _SDV_ -class heavy corvette and the two _CRS_ -class light cruisers that were approaching the battle at max burn. As they drew closer, what almost appeared to be a small cloud began to surround them.

"The Covenant are launching fighters!" Ryukyu warned. "I'm reading over two dozen Type-31 Seraphs and three times as many Banshees."

Tethong grounded his teeth together. They were having enough problems with one ship already; add in three more ships and fighters? There was no chance they could win this engagement. But they couldn't retreat either. If they tried to run, all the Covenant would do was pick them apart from afar. No, Tethong had to stay here and fight. And die here, as it was rapidly looking like.

Still, Tethong could try to make the best of the situation. If his fleet could do enough damage to these ships, he could potentially create a hole in the Covenant formation, one that following waves might be able to exploit.

"Ryukyu, turn over control of all Longsword fighters over to Captain Yoder of the 227th Destroyer Squadron then order him to break contact with that destroyer, come about, and engage the incoming Covenant ships. Designated them as targets 1-Bravo, 1-Charlie, and 2-Charlie. Tell Hiram his objective is to do as damage to those ships as he possibly can! Rally my remaining cruiser strike group and assigned them different attack vectors on that Covenant destroyer, mark as target 1-Alpha! We've got to hit that destroyer from different angles, disable her shields and remove her from the fight before we get swarmed with Covenant fighters!" Tethong winced as the _Breanne's Creek_ was speared right through her fusion reactor by one of the Covenant destroyer's energy projectors, causing the _Breanne's Creek_ to finally disintegrate into one giant fireball. "Do it, and do it now!"

Tethong was shoved against his restraints as the _Katara Pass_ rapidly accelerated to the side as her helmsman attempted to maneuver her into a position where she could approach the destroyer from above and hopefully on the other side of the Covenant destroyer's deadly plasma beam emitters. Her gunners continued to rake the destroyer with missile and autocannon fire, quickly depleting the Covenant's shields, but not as quickly as Tethong would have liked as he know Covenant reinforcements were closing in. He glanced over at his destroyers to see how they were doing.

Captain Yoder and his ships had already disengaged and were on an intercept course towards the approaching Covenant ships. The entirety of the fleet's compliment of Longswords were accompanying them but from the looks of it, Yoder had opted to forgo using them in the traditional fighter screen role as all the Longswords had broken away from the main group and were vectoring towards one of the Covenant cruisers, ignoring all the Banshees and Seraphs that stood in their way. Tethong couldn't say he disapproved. At the rate they were losing ships, they would only last but a few more minutes. Having a fighter screen or not wasn't going to change that fact.

"Continue firing on target 1-Alpha with the MACs and point defense guns but lock all Archer pods on target 1-Bravo and fire when ready!" Tethong ordered.

"Admiral, we've already expended seventy-five percent of all our munitions for the main guns," Bakshi warned. "We can't maintain our current rate of fire for long."

"Expend the rest," Tethong demanded. "There's no point going out with ordnance still in our lockers"

"Aye sir! Weaps, give me a firing - _WAH_ \- !"

Bakshi disappeared at the same time the entire ship was sent reeling by a plasma torpedo that struck her amidship. For a few precious seconds, all Tethong could do was blankly stare at the spot Bakshi's hologram once stood.

"TAO, what the hell happened to Captain Bakshi?" Tethong roared.

"We've lost all communications with the bridge sir!" the young lieutenant in charge of the CIC instantly replied, his fingers flying across his workstation. "Cause unknown!"

"What, is it a communications glitch?" Tethong demanded.

"No sir! It appears that the... that the bridge is... I'm getting reports that we have a hull breach right where the bridge is located sir! I think the bridge has been..."

"Destroyed," Tethong grimly finished for him. "Shit. Alright, switch over all systems over to the secondary bridge and contact the XO; inform Commander Tassano he's the Captain now."

"Aye sir!"

"Maintain our heading and continue fire on that destroyer!" he commanded even as another one of his frigates began to fall apart under an intense barrage of plasma cannon bolts. He glance at his rear display, depicting the status of Actium's Defense Fleet. By the looks of it, they were only about halfway mobilized.

"Come on Spaatz, hurry up," Tethong urged under his breath. "We're not going to be able last much longer out here."

 **XXXXX**

 **UNSC** _ **Kilkis**_ **  
High Orbit, Actium**

 **Admiral Spaatz**

They weren't going to be able to last much longer out there.

As Tethong's ships continued to, one by one, wink out of existence from Spaatz's tactical display, he could tell they had, at best, minutes before Tethong's entire battle group would be destroyed, leaving the road to Actium clear once more. And with Spaatz's fleet only halfway done mobilizing, there wasn't going to be much he could do to stop them. While Tethong had lasted longer than expected, he didn't last nearly as long as Spaatz had hoped. He needed more time, but it was clear from Tethong's performance sending ships out for the Covenant to shoot up just wouldn't do.

"Kanin."

"Sir?"

"How many interplanetary ballistic missiles has the Air Force converted over?" Spaatz asked, his eyes glued to his screen as yet another one of Tethong's ships went dark.

"Seven sir, though they'll have six more ready within the next five minutes."

"Can't wait that long. We need to act, now." Spaatz sighed as he pinched the bridge of his nose. "Alert Air Force Orbital Defense Command: arm all seven available missiles and standby to fire them at the Covenant."

"Sir, may I remind you, at this range, those missiles will require a target to lock on to in order for their guidance systems to work properly," Kanin warned, even as he set about executing Spaatz's orders. "However, Covenant ECM will prevent us from obtaining such a lock."

"I'm well aware of that Kanin."

"Then, with all due respect sir, how do you intend to circumnavigate this issue?"

Spaatz sighed. "We can't obtain a lock on the Covenant, that is true," he admitted. "However, we can obtain a lock on _them._ " He pointed at his screen.

Spaatz could see Kanin lean in to see what he was pointing at, and watched as his eyes widened with realization.

"Sir, that's the _Katara Pass,_ " Kanin exclaimed. "Are you bloomin' suggestin' we fire upon on our own ships?"

"Admiral Tethong is not going to be able to last much longer, and unfortunately he wasn't able to buy us the time we needed. We need some way to slow the Covenant down and this is the only way we can do that without losing any more ships," Spaatz said, feeling an inscrutable need to explain his actions even though as a four star admiral, the only authority he needed to answer to was UNSC High Command. "And I'm not suggesting you do it, I'm _ordering_ you: lock on to the _Katara Pass'_ transponder and make ready to fire."

Kanin was silent for a moment.

"Yes sir," he finally said. "Alertin' ODC. Standin' by to launch on your command."

Spaatz nodded, then took a deep breath before letting it out slowly. "All missiles…"

" _Fire_."

 **XXXXX**

 **UNSC** _ **Katara Pass  
**_ **Interplanetary Space**

 **Admiral Tethong**

"Target 1-Alpha's shields have been disabled!"

Tethong sat up straight in his seat. "Divert all batteries back to 1-Alpha and begin targeting their main batteries!"

"Aye si - VAMPIRE VAMPIRE VAMPIRE! All stations, all stations, we are getting locked on by six – no _seven_ interplanetary ballistic missiles!"

"What?" Tethong blurted out. "Ballistic missiles? Do you mean plasma torpedoes?"

"No sir! I'm tracking seven inbound SSM-75 'Svarog-IV' IPBMs bearing one seven three! Time to target, five mikes! Request permission to kill with birds?"

His mind struggling to catch up with all the information he had just been given, all Tethong could think to do was say, "No! Wait, who the fuck fired them?"

The tactical action officer looked up from his display.

"Actium," he replied, confusion coloring his voice before quickly returning his attention back to his station and Tethong could hear him saying into his radio, "Alpha Delta Foxtrot, this is Charlie Alpha seven four seven _:_ abort, abort, abort. Charlie Alpha has been buddy-spiked, I say again, Charlie Alpha has been buddy-spiked, how copy over?"

Tethong threw a startled glance at his display, which had updated to show seven small objects rapidly closing in on his ship. "What the _hell_ Spaatz?" he couldn't help but wonder out loud, even as the _Katara Pass_ shook as it was bombarded with plasma bolts. "Why are you shooting at my ship when the damn Covenant is right… there…"

Insight struck him in an instant. Due to the distance between Actium and the Covenant, and the speed at which both were traveling at, firing an IPBM without obtaining a proper lock would be akin to firing an unguided round out of one of the ODPs, with a very low probability of a hit. However, a lock was impossible as Covenant ECM was designed to prevent that very event from occurring. But, by firing the missiles directly at Tethong's ship, Spaatz could get the missiles to within range of the Covenant at which point the Tethong's gunners could guide the IPBMs to where they could do the most damage. Furthermore by having the missiles approach from directly behind the _Katara Pass,_ not only could Tethong physically protect the missiles from Covenant point defenses, the mass of his ship would also hide the missiles from their sensors until it was too late!

"Belay that order!" Tethong roared. "Helm, all engines ahead, full! Bring us in closer! Weaps, forget about their main battery, direct all weapons towards that destroyer's pulse laser turrets; take out their point defenses! Signal the rest of the fleet to do the same!"

"ADMIRAL! Target 1-Alpha is rotating around and I'm detecting a massive surge of energy on their ventral bow! I think they're attempting to take us out with their excavation beam!"

"Target their plasma beam emitter with the MACs and fire as she bears!"

"Sir, with our primary reactors offline, we won't be able to fire the MACs and bring the main thrusters to full power at the same time," Ryukyu pointed out.

Tethong grounded his teeth together in frustration. "Cease fire on the MACs, divert all available power to the main thrusters!" he finally decided. "Helm, get us in close and fast! TAO, TTT on those vampires?"

"Time to target: three mikes!"

"Weaps, standby to seize control of those IPBMs and guide them onto the Covenant: I want two missiles directed at 1-Alpha, three on 1-Bravo, and one apiece on 1-Charlie and 2-Charlie! Ryukyu, standby to fire the port side emergency thrusters! On my mark!"

The crew quickly set about executing his orders and Tethong snapped his attention back to his tactical display.

"Come on, come on, come on," Tethong impatiently muttered as he watched the Covenant destroyer spin around, trying to their energy projector to bear. Their bow was awashed with massive amounts of power, and Tethong knew with that amount of energy, the Covenant would be able to gut the _Katara Pass_ with a single shot. "TAO, status on the vampires!"

"TTT, ninety seconds!"

"ADMIRAL, WE'RE GETTING LOCKED ON BY THE COVENANT!"

"MAR –"

The Covenant fired.

 **XXXXX**

 **UNSC** _ **Kilkis**_ **  
High Orbit, Actium**

 **Admiral Spaatz**

Spaatz grimly bowed his head in silence as the UNSC _Katara Pass_ slowly fell apart on his display. The Covenant energy beam had gutted the _Marathon-_ class cruiser from bow to stern, literally cutting the ship in half, lengthwise. Small explosions were erupting all over the remains as whatever oxygen remained in her corridors explosively decompressed, forcing both halves of the former ship to slowly drift apart. Spaatz anxiously waited for signs of movement, but unfortunately long range sensors could not detect _any_ sign of escape pods leaving the ship, nor any distress beacons. Clearly, the UNSC _Katara Pass_ had been lost with all hands.

With the loss of their target, the computers onboard the Svarogs' warheads immediately defaulted to seeker mood and began targeting the nearest vessel not broadcasting a friendly IFF signal: the Covenant destroyer Tethong had marked as target 1-Alpha. Barely less than a couple hundred kilometers away, Covenant electronic countermeasures were unable to prevent the missiles from obtaining a lock and because of Tethong's actions, the Covenant's remaining point defense turrets had been destroyed, which meant the destroyer was unable to shoot the Svarogs down.

Spaatz impassively watched as the Svarogs deftly shoot through the debris field left in the wake of the _Katara Pass'_ destruction, and head straight for the destroyer. Frustratingly, the destroyer immediately deployed over a dozen decoy beacons and fired her emergency thrusters, causing the first six missiles to miss.

The seventh missiles, however…

Spaatz flinched and turned away as bright light filled his screen as the last remaining Svarog detonated in a white flash. As the light died down, Spaatz risked opening his eyes again, only to see his image had disappeared entirely.

"What happened?" Spaatz demanded. "Where's my image?"

"Image is gone sir, because we were using the cameras on Captain Yoder's flagship to obtain real-time footage of the battle, except the Captain Yoder's ship was just destroyed by target 1-Bravo," Kanin quickly explained. "With Battle Group Tethong now completely destroyed, we no longer have access to real-time feed therefore we are attempted to obtain footage from several imaging satellites in geosynchronous orbit around Tenedos, however due to the distance, there's a lag time of several minutes sir."

Spaatz pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. "As soon as you get connection, put it on screen; I need to know if we managed to take out that destroyer or not."

"Aye sir."

With nothing else to do but wait, Spaatz found himself impatiently tapping his foot on the ground.

"We're receivin' telemetry now sir," Kanin suddenly announced and as he did, Spaatz's display came to life. "Please note: this footage is approximately five minutes old."

Spaatz absentmindedly nodded in acknowledgement.

Kanin must have rewind the footage because it actually started with all seven missiles speeding towards the destroyer, similar to what Spaatz had seen a few minutes ago, only this time from another angle. As before, he watched as the destroyer deploy several decoy beacons, before igniting her port side thrusters, managing to avoid the first two Svarog missiles while the next four began chasing after the decoys. The seventh missile however, the destroyer was unable to dodge or fool, and Spaatz watch with a bit of satisfaction as the missile warhead was ejected from its booster pack and launched straight into the stern of the Covenant destroyer. The missile penetrated the hull, the hardened nose of the armor piercing warhead easily punching a hole the nanolaminated armor, then detonated in a brilliant white flash. The explosion wasn't nearly as big as it could have been as anti-ship missiles didn't carry as much explosive content due to the need for thicker housing for their armored piercing abilities, but a nuke was still a nuke.

As the explosion was quickly extinguished by the vacuum of space, Spaatz was finally able to survey the damage done to the Covenant.

The missile had struck in the spot right where the port side nacelle of the destroyer connected with the main body. The ensuing explosion had destroyed that connection, causing the entire nacelle to shear off, sending it flying away merrily in the opposite direction of the ship. Atmosphere was venting from the breach, bring along with it a mass amount of small objects, though the satellite was too far away to tell if the objects were debris or bodies. The purple hull of the ship was now black with soot, and about three quarters of the run lights on the destroyer had gone dark. The destroyer's engines had shut down, and now the ship was flying aimlessly through space.

While all the signs seemed to point at the ship being dead, Spaatz wasn't quite ready to celebrate just yet. While the damage looked devastating, in reality, depending on how good the damage control crews were, the damage was survivable. Hell, a UNSC ship could have survived that, and they didn't nearly have the same amount of redundancies and armor as Covenant ships did.

Still, the fact it had yet to move after a few minutes was promising.

"Kanin," Spaatz finally said. "Is there any way you can determine whether or not target 1-Alpha has been splashed?"

"I'm quite capable of determinin' the percent probability that we were able to deliver a fatal blow, wot, however given our general lack of knowledge in regards to Covenant ship design and naval procedures, I cannot determine _for certain_ whether that ship has been rendered unusable. Not without being integrated with their systems, sir."

Spaatz was just about to ask him to run the numbers when movement on his display caught his attention.

On screen, the Covenant destroyer's maneuvering thrusters had suddenly come to life, stabilizing the ship and stopping her aimless drifting. At first, he wasn't sure if that meant someone was still alive aboard the ship or if it was just some automated system, but then, two more ships appeared on his display: targets 1-Charlie and 2-Charlie, the two _CRS_ -class cruisers the Covenant had sent to reinforce the destroyer. As Spaatz watched, the cruisers flew in close to the damaged destroyer, to the point where they were less than a hundred meters apart, before deploying _something_ that connected the cruisers to the destroyer. Then they ignited their sublight engines.

"What are they doing?" Spaatz asked out loud. "Kanin, track their trajectory. Where are they going with that ship?"

"Looks like they're headed towards the thickest part of Tenedos' rings sir," Kanin replied with a frown. "I'm hesitant to say without definitive evidence, but I do believe they are attemptin' to take shelter there. Furthermore sir, I'm picking massive amounts of encrypted radio transmissions between the cruisers and that destroyer. I believe it is safe to say, target 1-Alpha is still operational, wot."

"Son of a _bitch,_ " Spaatz spat out. That destroyer had taken out thirteen UNSC warships, three squadrons of Longswords, seven anti-ship IPBMs, and it still wasn't dead? The amount of firepower Spaatz had already thrown at that ship would have been enough to destroy half of the Actium defense fleet. This wasn't _fair!_

"Well, at least three Covenant ships have been taken out of action?" Kanin suggested, in an attempt to cheer Spaatz up, but he wasn't interested.

"If the Covenant can get that ship back to operational status, then that's one more ship they'll be able to utilize to overwhelm our defenses," Spaatz said. "We need to take that ship out now, while it's still vulnerable." He sighed and rubbed his face. "What is that battlecruiser doing? Put her on screen."

To Spaatz's annoyance, the main body of the Covenant had already reorganized their formation to cover the hole left there by the three ships and had resumed their march towards Actium.

"What's the status of our fleet?" Spaatz demanded to know.

"Approximately seventy percent mobilized, sir."

"Tell those last few ships to hurry up," Spaatz snapped, watching as target 1-Alpha slip into cover within Tenedos' rings. As they did, the beginnings of a plan began to form. "And get a hold of Air Force command."

"I'm going to need their aircraft carriers."

* * *

1\. The UNSC _Katara Pass_ is named after the Battle of Katara Pass, which is not a real battle nor is it one from canon. It's actually a battle from my universe, first mentioned in my other story, _Missing in Action,_ chapter 3. I thought it would be fun to name a ship after my own stuff (call me conceited.)

2\. UNSC _Breanne's Creek_ : as above, this ship is named after another battle from my universe, first mentioned in _Missing in Action,_ chapter 8.

3\. UNSC _18 Scorpii_ : this ship is named after the Battle of 18 Scorpii which, unlike the other two examples, is actually a canon battle. The Battle of 18 Scorpii took place in March of 2543 and was one of the few UNSC victories over the Covenant during the Human-Covenant War.

4\. UNSC _Gladius_ and _Sagan Blue:_ these two ships are actually canon ships, and the only two known _Gladius-_ class corvettes in Halo Canon. I was too lazy to think up of my own names, so I decided to borrow from canon.

5\. _Martel_ and _Oberon_ aren't named after anything in particular, but because I've already explained the origins of all the other ships' names, I thought I'd just leave this note here.

The reasoning for these ships names are because, like I said at the start, I was having a lot of problems writing this chapter, and as a result, I kept allowing myself to get distracted. In the future, not every ship name is going to have some history behind it, and a lot of them are just going to be names just for the sake of names.


	4. Chapter 4

As I mentioned in my last chapter, this chapter and the one before it are **not** in chronological order; the first and second parts of this chapter are happening simultaneously as the events in chapter 3, while the last part takes place a few minutes after.

* * *

 **Chapter 4**

 **Wayward Station, High Orbit, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0812**

 **Amber**

Amber fanatically banged on the elevator controls. When that failed to make the elevator magically travel any faster, she punched them out of frustration.

"Come on! Can't this fucking thing go any faster?" Amber yelled.

"Amber, could you please calm down?" Poolsie pleaded.

Amber shot her a glare and was about to point out Poolsie herself looked like she was on the verge of panicking, when Poolsie threw a significant glance at the other occupants in the elevator. Standing behind them in the elevator car was an old lady and probably her two grandkids. The younger of the two, a boy that looked to be about one, didn't appear to have a clue as to what was going on, but he did look as if he was having the time of his life. The older one though, a little girl probably about four or five, clearly knew something was happening and Amber felt her heart break at the terrified look on her face.

The little girl was staring straight at Amber with wide eyes, and looked like she was about to cry. Given that she had a baby sister who was thirteen years younger than her, Amber knew how a toddler reacted to a situation they knew nothing about was largely influenced by the grownups surrounding them. So, seeing Amber on the verge of freaking out was probably making her freak out.

"Fuck," Amber muttered to herself before vigorously rubbing her face. She took a deep breath to try and calm herself down. It didn't really help, to be honest, so Amber figured the best to do right now was just to turn away so the kid couldn't see the expression on her face.

In the meantime, Poolsie had dropped down into a crouched so she could address the kid directly.

"Hi," Amber heard her say. "I'm Haley. What's your name?"

Through the reflection on the wall, Amber could see the little girl nervously glancing at her grandmother, who gave her an encouraging nod.

"Antje," she shyly said.

"That's a beautiful name!" Poolsie said encouragingly. "I wish I had your name! Haley is too boring."

The girl visibly brightened. "Mommy says it was her sister's name. Mommy says she was a hero cause she fought the monsters!" she proudly declared, then hesitated. "Nana says the monsters are coming. Are you going to fight the monsters too?"

Poolsie glanced in Amber's direction, and Amber could see her hiding a nervous look. "Yes, that's what we're going to do."

The little girl nodded, as if that's what she was expecting.

"I hope you come back," she unexpectedly said. "Mommy says her sister went to go fight monsters, but she never came back. Why didn't she want to come back?"

Amber could see Poolsie had no idea how to respond to that, so she decided to jump into the conversation.

"Ma'am, do you know where you need to go?" Amber asked the grandmother, who gave her a warm smile.

"There's a bunker in the middle of the station where all civilians are supposed to go to," Amber was told. "Are you ladies part of this station's crew?"

"No ma'am," Amber replied. "We're stationed aboard one of those ships out there. We're trying to get back to it."

The lady nodded and gave an encouraging smile as the elevator came to a stop and doors slid open. "Well, stay safe out there, you hear? And good luck. Come on kids, say goodbye to the nice soldiers."

Poolsie waved at Antje as all three of them walked off the car. As soon as they were clear, Amber punched the "close door" button with a bit more force than she intended.

"At least somebody aboard this fucking station knows where they're going," she snarled.

"Amber, you need to calm down," Poolsie urged. "It's not helping."

Amber did her best to not snap at her. She knew she needed to calm down, it just wasn't easy and Poolsie continually reminding her to calm down wasn't helping matters.

The problem wasn't so much that there was an invasion going on, it was that Amber had no idea what to do. Sure, she had spent countless hours running drill after drill, practicing what to do in the event of a Covenant invasion. She knew where her battle station was, where her backup battle station was, what to do if there was a hull breach, where to find the proper equipment if there was a fire, what station she had to report to if the Covenant began boarding the ship, and exactly how many meters she would have to go to find an escape pod in the event she needed to abandon ship. She even know how to do her section chief's job in the event he was wounded or killed.

The problem about all this was, all of her training was based on the assumption the Covenant would attack _**when she was on the**_ **Gabrielle** , an assumption, she was quickly realizing, wouldn't always hold true. This was only her second time aboard Wayward Station and because of that, she really didn't know much about it. She didn't know where she was supposed to report to in the event of an attack, much less who she was supposed to report to. She didn't know where the armory was in the event the station was board, or where the emergency spacesuits were in the case of a hull breach. Hell, she didn't even know if this station was equipped with escape pods in the event she need to evacuate, though it stood to reason there had to be _some_ way for everyone to escape in the event this station was about to be destroyed.

In short, at this point, Amber was about as helpless as those little kids that had just walked off the elevator.

"Just… take a deep breath Amber. We're going to head to the hanger bay, find a Pelican that will take us back to the _Gabrielle,_ and then we'll be okay," Poolsie was saying.

Amber resisted the urge to snort. Even if there was a Pelican just waiting for them, which was doubtful as all military ships were supposed to be heading towards higher orbit to form a battle line, surely Amber and Poolsie weren't the only ones in this situation. And it was doubtful a Pelican would bother to deliver personnel to a ship that had already left port.

Of course, Poolsie no doubt knew that already, which was probably why it sounded like she was trying to reassure herself more than anything.

The elevator doors opened up to the hanger bay and Amber and Poolsie were greet with a mass of people milling around. Based on the uniforms and patches alone, there were Sailors and Marines from half a dozen different shipsand stations, a handful of Airmen, and at least one or two Army Troopers looking lost.

At the sight of the Soldiers, Amber felt a new wave of panic wash over her as she suddenly remembered her aunt was stationed on Actium's surface. Amber could only hope she was having more luck in getting ready for the impending attack.

"I wonder where we're supposed to go," Amber heard Poolsie mutter to herself.

In response, Amber walked up to the nearest sailor and grabbed him by the shoulder.

"Hey, Petty Officer!" Amber called out. "Do you know where we're supposed to go?"

"You trying to get back to your ship, shipmate?" he interrupted.

"Yeah. Me and her," Amber said, jerking her head in Poolsie's direction.

"Yeah? You and me both. I'm trying to get back to Byzas Station, only the last shuttle took off five minutes ago, and there are no more coming back."

"What are we supposed to do then?" Poolsie nervously asked.

The petty officer shrugged. "That's what we're trying to figure out now," he said, gesturing to everyone in the room.

"CAN I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? I NEED EVERYONE'S ATTENTION ON ME PLEASE!"

Amber looked around to see a Navy O-2 standing on a box on the other side of the room, waving his hand.

"I realize all of you are trying to return to your assigned postings," the lieutenant began as the room fell silent. "Unfortunately, that is just not possible at this juncture. As a result, everyone in this room is being reassigned to this station! Because of that, I need all personnel who report to NAVCOM to gather on the port side of the room over here! All personnel who report to UNICOM, report to the starboard side of the room! Once you have done that, we will assign you all battle stations! That is all!"

The lieutenant stepped down from his box. Immediately the crowd began to split in two.

Grabbing a hold of Poolsie so they wouldn't get separated, Amber forced her way to where she was supposed to go. It wasn't easy as the vast majority of the room was headed in the same direction, and everyone was getting urged on by a sense of fear and uncertainty.

"Okay," the same lieutenant from before began as soon as the room had split. "I need anyone with an aviation rating, or has anything to do with aircraft maintenance, to go see Chief Shaffer over there! Anyone with a weapons specialty rating, go see FC1 McCreary over there!"

The lieutenant continued to shout out directions, but Amber was no longer listening. "Come on Poolsie!" Amber said, grabbing her by the hand. Together they shoved their way through the crowd until they reached the petty officer they were supposed to report to.

"You FC1 McCreary?" Amber demanded.

"Weapons ratings? Which ones?" McCreary said instead.

"Gunner's Mate Owain," Amber immediately rattled off.

"And I'm a Missile Tech; MT Pool!" Poolsie hastily added.

"Okay, you two, come with me!"

McCreary immediately took off and Amber hastily chased after him.

"Hey FC1, have you heard anything about... well, anything? How far away the Covenant are, how many there are, fleet composition, that sort of thing?" Amber called out to McCreary.

"Na," was his response. "Though I heard one of our battle groups is getting thrown out there to try and slow the Covies down."

"Which one?" Poolsie anxiously asked.

"Battle Group Tethong, I think."

"Any word how they're holding out?" Amber started to ask, but was interrupted when McCreary abruptly stopped, almost causing Amber to run into him.

"Look girl," he tersely snapped. "At this point, I know just about as much as you do, which is jack and shit. My job is to make sure this station is ready for combat, which means throwing people into turrets. So shut up and move."

"Yeah, fuck you too buddy," Amber muttered under her breath as McCreary took off running down the corridor again.

"GM, you know how to use a Mark 2488 'Onager' turret?" McCreary demanded as he led them into a small fire control room branching off from the corridor.

Amber snorted. "Of course."

"Good." He pointed at a partially enclosed seat sticking out from the bulkhead that was facing a trio of screens. "You're in turret Eight Delta. MT, with me!"

McCreary took off once again with Poolsie in tow.

Without preamble, Amber tossed herself into the seat. She grabbed the available headset and began familiarizing herself with the controls. There wasn't much to it: sticking out from the ground between her legs was a simple control stick which controlled the movement of the turret. On the front of the stick, there was a single trigger which obviously fired the Onager. At the very top of the stick were a series of buttons which controlled her main optics, allowing her to zoom in and out, as well as allow her to switch between various sights such as thermals, infrared, etc. On the side of the stick, there was a large button that would close the gun shield, which when activated, would cause her turret to disappear behind a meter thick plating of Titanium-A armor, protecting the gun from damage while it recharged.

Sticking out of the wall above the control stick were four screens. The center and largest screen was her primary gun sights and HUD. The small screen on her left depicted the status of the Onager itself, while the equally small screen on her right depicted the charge and reloading progress of the Onager. If Amber remembered correctly, that screen was also where she could decide how many capacitors she wanted to use; utilizing all five of her available capacitors would give her a much stronger shot but a much slower rate of fire as she would need to wait for all the capacitors to reload at the same time whereas if she cycled between each individual capacitor, she would have a much faster rate of fire at the cost of a much weaker shot as she would only be utilizing a fifth of the available power. The last screen was for her backup sights; due to a strange design choice, her main optics were mounted on the Onager itself so while the Onager was under cover behind the gun shield, she wouldn't be able to use them. Her backup sights were designed to address this problem, allowing her to gain some situational awareness even while she was under cover.

Turning all four screens on, Amber deployed her turret and began moving it around, trying to get an idea of what her fields of fire looked like. Based on what she was seeing, Amber was controlling a turret that was located on the side of the station: if she panned her turret upwards, she could see outer space, and the battle line the fleet was rapidly forming. If she panned her turret down, she could see Actium sprawled out below her.

Spinning her turret in a full three sixty, Amber looked along the hull of the station, trying to spot Wayward Station's other weapons so she could have an idea of what sort of support she had. Most of them were undercover, but to her right, she could see what looked like the top part of an M870 "Rampart" turret, which was equipped with both 50mm autocannons and a pod of Argent V missiles. The station's primary method of defense, Ramparts were used for point defense and were entirely controlled by AIs due to their faster reaction times, though in the event of an emergency, they could be manually controlled by humans.

To her left, Amber could see an M95 "Lance" missile pod. Lance missiles, along with the Onager magnetic accelerator cannon she was using, were the station's primary offensive armament, intended to be used against enemy fighters, boarding craft, and small escort ships. Unlike the Rampart, Lances and Onagers were entirely controlled by humans, and under no circumstances could be utilized by AIs due to fears about allowing a single entity access to that much firepower.

Staring at the pod, Amber wondered if that was the one Poolsie was controlling, though it was impossible for her to determine from here.

Her monitors abruptly pinged, startling her, but it was only her HUD updating to indicate a mass of friendly ships were rising up from the surface of Actium. Had the evacuation already begun? Amber didn't think the colonial government was _that_ organized.

Curious, she turned her turret in that direction and realized most of the ships were broadcasting an Air Force IFF tag. Ah, reinforcements probably.

She started to look away, expecting the ships to start flying by the station as they travelled to join the Navy's battle line up in high orbit, but they didn't. Instead, they were stopping in low and almost appeared to loading up in the Air Force's aircraft carriers.

Amber frowned. What was the Air Force up to?

 **XXXXX**

 **Low Orbit, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0822**

" **Zelda"**

Zelda could feel sweat pouring down his neck as his environmental suit struggled to keep him cool as heat began building up in his cockpit; the result of all the friction on his hull, on doubt. His HUD was lit up with all sorts of warning lights, and there might have been an alarm or two, but it was a little hard to hear them with all the rattling and vibrating. None of the alerts were emergency warnings though, so Zelda was content to leave them be for now.

And then, just like that, it was over.

Letting out a sigh of relief, Zelda quickly switched off his engines, letting his bird drift along, trying to allow his engines a chance to cool down before they were thrown into combat. While Broadswords were rated to be able to reach escape velocity under their own power without the need for a booster pack, it put a _lot_ of strain on the engines, which is why they were only used in an emergency. Like a Covenant invasion, Zelda supposed.

 _"Omega Flight, radio check, sound off in sequence,"_ Bellum suddenly ordered, and Zelda couldn't help roll his eyes. He understood the need to make sure everyone in the squadron had made it off the planet in one piece, which is why they had to do roll call again, but it was kind of annoying having to sit there again listening to everyone sound off.

"So what's the plan boss?" Zelda asked over SQUADCOM as soon as the last fighter checked in. "I don't know about you, but I'm ready to kick ass and take names.

He heard Odessa let out a snort.

"What?" he demanded.

 _"Anyone ever notice how Zelda is only ever ready for a fight when he's sitting behind at least forty millimeters worth of armor?"_

"What? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

 _"It means: you always seem to run away whenever a fistfight breaks out when we go drinking."_

"What? Lies and deceits I tell you," Zelda exclaimed. "I never run away!"

 _"Yes you do."_

"No I don't."

 _"Yes you do."_

"No, I _don't_. Ask Betros, he was the last guy I went drinking with. Tell them Betros!"

 _"Wait, how did I get dragged into this?"_ Betros asked, sounding confused.

"Don't worry about it," Zelda assured him. "Just tell the squadron how great of a fighter I am."

Betros audibly hesitated.

 _"But you're not,"_ he finally said with obvious reluctance.

Zelda sighed as the rest of the squadron started giggling. "Bah, what the hell would you know Betros? You're only a warrant officer(1)."

At once the protest came streaming in.

 _"Whoa, hold on..."_

 _"That's totally uncalled for!"_

 _"Me thinks you went a little too far there Zelda,"_ Odessa chided. _"You should take that back."_

"Alright, fine!" Zelda said, rolling his eyes. "I admit, I took it too far: I apologize Betros."

 _"That's alright,"_ Betros replied, sounding equal parts confused and amused _. "I forgive you."_

Zelda waited a moment before quickly adding, "You're still a cunt for not backing me up though."

 _"That's okay,"_ came Betros' highly amused replied. _"I can live with that."_

 _"Good,"_ Bellum suddenly interjected, _"because we're leaving it at that. Listen up guys, we're headed for the_ Trenchard _to get refit for space combat."_

Zelda grunted in acknowledgement as he reactivated his engines and adjusted his course. Of course they had to go to the _Trenchard_ first. Zelda always forgot how much of a difference there was between fighting in the sky and fighting in space. For starters, the distances involved in space combat were so much greater than that of fighting within the confines of a planet's atmosphere. Which meant Zelda's Broadsword not only needed to be refueled in order to replace all the fuel he had burned trying to achieve escape velocity, he also needed to have drop tanks installed so that he could have enough gas for all the dogfighting he would no doubt be doing.

In the vacuum of space, there was no gravity, so certain weapons couldn't be used. The Mark 208 general purpose bombs Zelda was currently carrying, for example, was pretty much useless as they were entirely dependent on gravity and drag for propulsion. Conversely, because there was no gravity or drag, ships could be built much larger, with far more armor than they could if they were designed to be used within an atmosphere, which meant the Anvil IV air to air missiles Zelda was also carrying were also pretty much worthless as they didn't carry nearly enough explosive power to penetrate most, if not all, standard spaceship armor.

Then there was the entire "can't breathe in space" thing. Zelda's cockpit was both sealed against the vacuum of space and equipped with carbon monoxide scrubbers, but they could only do so much. He needed extra tanks of oxygen installed if he wanted to spend any extended amount of time in space.

All in all, it was going to take several minutes before Zelda was ready for space combat.

Zelda calmly followed the rest of the squadron as they banked to the right and headed for the _Trenchard_. From several hundred kilometers away, the _Trenchard_ almost looked like a harmless toy but Zelda knew firsthand how deceiving looks could be. The lead ship of her class, the UNSC _Trenchard_ was the newest ship in the Air Force's fleet of aircraft carriers, and the result of almost two decades worth of hard lessons learned in the fight against the Covenant.

 _"Tango Charlie Tango, this is Omega Flight, on approach to your station, requesting instructions for landing, over,"_ Bellum asked over the radio as the _Trenchard's_ hull quickly began to fill Zelda's cockpit window.

 _"Omega Flight, Charlie Tango. Proceed along highlighted route to hanger six. Be advised, vertical landing is required. Also, due to space requirements, aircraft will need to land on both the ground and the ceiling, over."_

 _"Charlie Tango, Omega Flight, we copy your traffic. Proceeding along highlighted route, out,"_ Bellum said over the general channel before switching to SQUADOM. _"Alright guys, follow me in. Betros, with me. We'll go in first with 3rd Flight and dock on the ceiling. Odessa and Zelda, go with 2nd Flight and dock on the floor."_

 _"Copy that Omega Leader,"_ Zelda heard Odessa say in response.

Triggering his forward thrusters to cancel out his forward momentum, Zelda drummed his fingers against his armrest as he impatiently waited as half the squadron began flying into the _Trenchard_. This was one of the things he didn't like about the _Trenchard_ -class of aircraft carriers: their size.

From how Zelda understood it, one of the things the Air Force had learned in the last two decades was that the only way to defeat the Covenant in the open field of battle was through overwhelming numbers. So, in an effort to increase production numbers, _Trenchard_ (2)-class aircraft carriers were about five hundred meters smaller than their predecessors, the _Mukerjee_ (3)-class aircraft carriers. This of course came at the cost of interior space: everything, including the hangers, were much smaller than they used to, resulting in an increased difficulty in landing.

Zelda wasn't concerned about his ability to land in tight quarters but rather, everyone else's. So, in order to minimize the chance of one of his dumbass squadron mates from flying into the back of his plane, Zelda deliberately waited until he was the last plane to enter the _Trenchard_. That way, he would be the one closest to the hanger doors which incidentally would allow him to be the first to deploy when they finally got into combat.

Gently firing his rearward thrusters, Zelda deftly maneuvered his Broadsword past the meter thick bay doors and into the belly of the ship. Switching on his bottom camera so he could see the aircraft marshaller's instructions, Zelda stopped in mid-air and slowly turned around so he was facing the doors.

"Landing gear," Zelda called out before gently lowering his Broadsword to the ground. "Magnetic clamps."

A light on his dashboard turned green, indicating his Broadsword was now secured to the deck.

Powering down, Zelda watched as the hanger bay doors rumbled closed. As was standard operating procedure, all the oxygen in the hanger bay had been pumped out, both to prevent explosive decompression as well as minimize the risk of a fire, so Zelda wasn't able to hear as the doors slammed shut, but he could feel the rumble as it translated through the metal.

Leaning back, Zelda automatically started to reach for his cockpit release lever.

 _"Guys, stay in your birds, we're not going to be here too long,"_ Bellum ordered over the radio, and Zelda reflexively looked towards the ceiling where Bellum's Broadsword was attached, upside down, directly above him. Having been assigned to a ground installation for the last month and a half, the sight was a bit of a mind screw for Zelda, and he was forced to look away.

 _Tap tap._

Zelda jerked and around to see one of the _Trenchard_ 's aircraft maintainers, clad in a vacuum sealed suit, tapping on his cockpit window. The maintainer pressed his palm against the window, and suddenly Zelda could hear the man's voice over his headset.

 _"Sir?"_ he was saying. _"We're going to need you to open your bomb bay doors."_

Zelda gave the man a thumbs up in acknowledgement before pushing a button and watched as the man float away. As was also standard, the gravity in the hanger had been turned off in order to facilitate the loading of heavy ordnance.

He couldn't physically see what they were doing to his Broadsword, but his HUD was automatically updating as they made changes: they were installing the extra fuel and oxygen tanks, replacing his Anvils with Medusa air to air missiles and replacing his bombs with ASGM-10 anti-ship missiles. They also installed another two drums for his autocannon, increasing his ammunition reserves by three times the amount.

Without any gravity, it didn't take them long to have all the new equipment installed, and soon the chief mechanic was indicating for him to shut the bomb bay doors. At first Zelda thought they were done, and he moved to restart his engines, but instead of getting clear, they instead moved to the sides of his birds and began installing weapon hardpoints to both the top and undersides of his wings, allowing for _even more_ ordnance to be installed.

Zelda was impressed. And admittedly, a bit confused. What, was command expecting him to take on the entire Covenant Navy? Zelda was good, _really good_ , but even he had to acknowledge that feat may have been beyond him.

He looked around the hanger to see the rest of the squadron was receiving the same treatment. He reached for his radio.

"Hey Bellum," he called, looking up. He could see her start before looking up at him. Down at him. Whatever. "Have you noticed how much ordnance they're giving us?"

 _"Good,"_ Bellum interrupted. _"From what I'm hearing, we're going to need all of it."_

Zelda cocked his head. "Why?"

"What are we doing?"

 **XXXXX**

 **UNSC** _ **Kilkis**_ **  
High Orbit, Actium  
0825**

 **Spaatz**

"Admiral Spaatz? I have General Iqbal waiting for you on line one."

Spaatz waved in Kanin's direction to show he had heard him, before turning back to the communication's officer. "Signal the CO of Destroyer Squadron 29, have him assemble his entire force at rally point Omaha Baker and await further orders."

"Aye sir."

"Kanin, transfer General Iqbal to my station, but don't put him on just yet," Spaatz ordered as he walked back to his station. He took a moment to straighten his uniform and mentally steeled himself.

As commanding officer of the sector, Spaatz was in charge of all UNSC military personnel in the system: every single Sailor, Marine, Airman, Soldier, Militiaman, ship, and military asset assigned to the Ambracia System was his to command. However, giving orders to individual units wasn't as easy as having Kanin connect him to the unit in question. The military didn't work that way; even for Spaatz, he had to respect the chain of command. Which meant, when attempting to reallocate military resources, especially from another military branch, Spaatz needed to deal with his subordinates. Which meant Spaatz needed to deal with General Iqbal.

Tevita Iqbal was a four-star Air Force general and overall head of all Air Force personnel and assets in the Ambracia System. In terms of chain of command, Iqbal reported directly to Spaatz, which was rather unfortunate in Spaatz's opinion: truth be told, Spaatz didn't really like Iqbal very much.

In the two years they had been working together, Spaatz had found Iqbal to be one of the most cautious and risk-averse military officers he had ever encountered. He was, in particular, very reluctant to ever utilize the aircraft carriers under his command. In some ways, it made sense as Iqbal had spent much of his military career serving aboard aircraft carriers and would thus have an enormous attachment to them. And plus, to be fair, a certain amount of reservation was expected among Air Force officers as their ships had less armor and firepower when compared to Navy warships. However, the UNSC was in the midst of fighting the worst war in human history: taking risks was part of the job.

Then there was the fact that Iqbal had a tendency to embody all the negative stereotypes associated with a military officer. A seventh generation Air Force officer, Iqbal and his family had all the contacts and political clout to ensure he was able to obtain some of the cushiest and most influential assignments and positions in the military. He had obtain his commission through one of the service academies, with a ring to prove it, and thus looked down on officers who had been commissioned through alternative programs, such as ROTC or OCS.

Finally, with forty plus years in the Air Force, Iqbal was very much a military traditionalist, and seemingly more concerned about ensuring the glory of the Air Force, as opposed to doing what was best for the UNSC as a whole.

In short, Spaatz tried to avoid interacting with him as much as possible. Unfortunately, that just wasn't possible right now so the only thing Spaatz could do was to temporarily shelve his ego and get this over with as soon as possible.

Spaatz nodded at Kanin, and immediately a holographic image of Iqbal, with his slicked back greasy hair, his pencil mustache, and his immaculate dress uniform, appeared on screen.

 _"Admiral Spaatz,"_ Iqbal coolly greeted.

"General Iqbal," Spaatz smoothly replied. "I trust you've been monitoring the situation unfolding up here in orbit?"

Iqbal's upper lip curled as the result of a poorly concealed sneer. _"I have, yes sir."_

"And I trust you already know about the skirmish just outside the orbit of Tenedos?"

 _"Yes. You sent a task force out to attack the Covenant vanguard, but ultimately it was an_ **Air Force** _missile, not a Navy warbird, that struck the killing blow."_

Spaatz did his best to ignore the small slight against his troops and instead, tried to focus on his task at hand. Still, he couldn't help but point out, "Unfortunately General, _**we**_ , weren't able to kill that destroyer, only disable it. That ship, along with two escorts, was able to withdraw into Tenedos' rings, where the thick density of Tenedos' satellites will be able to protect her from _**our**_ indirect fire."

Iqbal didn't comment and instead, pulled out a cigarette and immediately lit it. Spaatz frowned as Iqbal exhaled, causing his image to waver slightly as the smoke washed over the camera.

"Look General, let me just get to the point," Spaatz suddenly said. "We need to get out and eliminate that disabled destroyer while we still have the chance, and I need at least two of your aircraft carrier air division and their accompanying fighters in order to accomplish it. I don't care which two, I just need them now."

Spaatz could see a surprised look pass over Iqbal's face.

 _"With all due respect sir: why?"_ Iqbal abruptly asked.

Spaatz raised an eyebrow. He wasn't sure which part of his orders Iqbal was protesting. "Excuse me?"

 _"Why would should I risk deploying my ships to seek out and eliminate a crippled Covenant ship? One, I would like to point out, that has already singlehandedly destroyed thirteen Navy warbirds? The ship is crippled and has dropped out of formation. Is it not already out of the fight? Sir?"_

"She is out of the fight," Spaatz agreed. " _For now_. Unfortunately, she won't stay that way forever. Eventually, she _will_ return to the fight and in my experience, she will return at the most inconvenient time possible. Furthermore, even if she proves unable to return, she is still crewed by several hundred Covenant soldiers, many of whom could easily be transferred to other ships and be utilized in a boarding party role. Lastly, while her point defenses have been destroyed, her main batteries haven't and with her holding station around Tenedos, that puts her in a position to ambush any reinforcements we may receive in the next few hours."

 _"Yes, I understand that sir,"_ Iqbal replied rather shortly. _"What I don't understand is why_ **my** _carriers are needed. Surely you have several destroyer squadrons or an assault carrier strike group you could deploy instead?"_

"I do, and one of the Navy's destroyer squadrons _will_ be accompanying your carriers on this operation," Spaatz informed him, doing his best to hold back his growing irritation with the conversation. "However, while Tenedos' rings are very dense, the section the Covenant are taking cover in is only five kilometers wide. For a stationary target that is undergoing repairs, that's enough. However for an attacking force, there simply isn't enough room for our destroyers to maneuver. Only fighters would have both the speed and the firepower to close the distance and eliminate the target while at the same time, evade the ship's main batteries. The Navy destroyers will instead be used to supplement the carrier's escort force, providing a secondary screening force."

Spaatz could tell Iqbal was suddenly a lot more interested in the operation, and he did his best to hide a smile. Everything Spaatz had just said was absolutely true and necessary for his plan to work, however the mission could have easily been accomplished by a Navy assault carrier as opposed to an Air Force aircraft carrier. But, Spaatz knew if he had gone with the naval option instead, Iqbal would spent most of the battle hoarding his ships instead of integrating them into the defensive line. This way, there was no way of avoiding that now. All because Spaatz knew Iqbal would have relished the chance, in his view, for the Air Force to accomplish something the Navy couldn't.

That being said, Iqbal still wasn't one hundred percent sold on the operation.

 _"But how would this task force reach Tenedos?_ " Iqbal asked. _"I would have thought the destruction of your strike group would have shown you the futility of charging headlong at the Covenant, as opposed to waiting in orbit for the Covenant to come to us."_

"That's why we're doing a slipspace jump instead."

 _"The UNSC isn't capable of performing an intersystem slipspace jump_ ," Iqbal immediately pointed out. _"Our engines are simply incapable of that level of precision. That's one of the great advantages the Covenant have over us."_

"We can if we have a slipspace guidance beacon."

 _"But we'll need a Prowler to plant one. And, given the vast emptiness of space between Actium and Tenedos, it would simply be impossible for a Prowler to approach Tenedos without detection. Any ship attempting to do such a thing would be intercepted megameters away."_

"We don't need a Prowler. There's already a beacon in place," Spaatz triumphantly announced.

 _"There is?"_

"Kanin?"

Kanin's avatar suddenly appeared in the conversation. "Vulcan Industries," he said.

Iqbal frowned. _"I'm... not familiar with that."_

"Not to worry sir, I wouldn't have expected you to be," Kanin assured him. "Vulcan Industries was a mining company fifty years ago that won the mining rights to Tenedos' rings. A few months after that however, the company's CEO was charged and convicted with funding various Insurgent groups in the Eridanus System, and the company went belly up, as it were, not long after. But not before the company had moved quite a substantial amount of mining equipment to Tenedos. Including several slipspace guidance beacons for their trawlers."

Iqbal looked intrigued. _"And we're sure these beacons still work?"_

"I'm capable of accessing these beacons remotely sir, and have verified that they are indeed, in working condition. Furthermore, I've taken the liberty and upgraded their software to ensure an even more precise jump. And while the margin of error is still high when compared to the Covenant, it will still be more accurate than a blind jump."

 _"Well then. It appears to be settled,"_ Iqbal finally declared. _"Admiral, you shall have my aircraft carriers. I have two carrier air division that are currently retrieving fighters from the surface and reequipping them for space combat: the UNSCs_ Pégoud(4) _and_ Trenchard _. I shall have them ready for use at once."_

Spaatz did his best to hide his surprise. The _Trenchard_? Wasn't that one of the Air Force's newest carriers? He was surprised Iqbal was willing to risk his new shiny toy. But as Spaatz glanced at the roster of assigned carriers to the Actium Defense Fleet, he realized the only other carrier available on this side of the planet was the UNSC _Suzan Iqbal_. And given that it was named after one of Iqbal's ancestors, it made sense Iqbal would have a soft spot for that ship.

Spaatz mentally snorted. Whatever. He got what he wanted.

"Have the carriers assemble at rally point Omaha Baker. Destroyer Squadron 29 is already waiting for them there," Spaatz commanded, before abruptly terminating the connection and turning to Kanin. "Designated the entire group as Joint Task Force Omaha and inform the CO of DS-29 he's taken orders from the Air Force now. Give them the mission objectives and all the current intel we have on target 1-Alpha, then order them to execute the operation as soon as possible."

"The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can focus on defending against the rest of the Covenant fleet."

* * *

1\. **Warrant Officer** : unlike the other service branches, the current day modern US Air Force does not utilize warrant officers anymore due to a general lack of role within the Air Force. Given the theoretical size of the UNSC Air Force though, in my headcanon, I feel like all five warrant officer ranks (Warrant Officer 1 and Chief Warrant Officer 2 to 5) would be brought back and utilized in the same way as the current US Army does: as a cheap and fast way to obtain pilots for their numerous airframes. The only difference would be, in the UNSC Air Force, warrant officers are mostly confined to the Colonial Militia, and are only commissioned to fly atmospheric airframes such as UH-144 "Falcons," AC-220 "Vultures," etc.

It would only be within recent years, and due to all the loses the Air Force has been taking in the fight against the Covenant, that Colonial Militia pilots would be able to transfer to the UNSC Air Force and retrain to fly interplanetary aircraft like Broadswords, Shortswords, Longswords, and Pelicans.

Side note: to any of my non-American readers, please note there's a very big difference between Warrant Officers in the US military as opposed to most nations' militaries. In most militaries, Warrant Officers and Chief Warrant Officers are the highest ranks for enlisted noncommissioned officers, equivalent to Sergeant Majors and Master Chief Petty Officers in the US military. Warrant Officers in the US military however, **are** commissioned officers, occupying the chain just above senior enlisted ranks, but just below officer grade ranks. If you look up Warrant Officer (United States) on the English version of Wikipedia, it will explain the difference far better than I can.

2\. The UNSC _Trenchard_ made a brief appearance in my other story, _Missing in Action,_ but I don't think I ever explained the origins of its name. The _Trenchard_ is named after Marshal of the Royal Air Force **Hugh Montague Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard,** considered to be the father of the British Royal Air Force.

3\. The _Mukerjee-_ class of aircraft carriers is named after Air Marshal **Subroto Mukerjee** , widely considered to be the father of the Indian Air Force, and it's first Chief of the Air Staff.

4\. The UNSC _Pégoud_ is named after **Sous-lieutenant (2nd Lieutenant) Adolphe Célestin Pégoud** , a French Army pilot and the first fighter ace **ever,** obtaining his ace status by shooting down six German airplanes in 1915 during World War I. Lieutenant Pégoud also unique in that he was the first man to ever make a parachute jump from an airplane (before, it had only been done from anchored hot air balloons.) Lieutenant Pégoud himself was shot down and killed in action on August 31, 1915. He was 26.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

 **Camp Hoxha, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0830**

 **Tariq**

Tariq hauled himself out of the hatch so closely behind Noble, his head was almost up her ass. Fortunately Chenko wasn't around to crack some joke about Tariq being a literal brown-noser, so he turned around to check up on Corona.

"Come on Rook, hurry the fuck up!" Tariq snapped. "We're at war, don't you know? This ain't some fucking, comedy sitcom road trip bullshit! This is the shizznit! Move like you got a pair!"

Corona came scrambling out of the crew compartment hatch like his ass was on fire. He moved to jump off the top of the tank, but Tariq grabbed the back of his vest before he could.

"Hey! Where the fuck is your em seven!?"

Corona gave him a confused look. "You mean my SMG? It's in the tank."

"The fuck is it doing in there?"

"Um... not a whole lot?" Corona suggested, and Tariq barely managed to stop himself from smacking him.

"You trying to be funny? Go fucking get it!"

As Corona dove back into the tank to retrieve it, Tariq roared after him, "From this point on Rook, you take that damn thing wherever you go! You go get chow, you go take a shit, that weapon better be glued to your side! Treat it like it's your dick! In fact, treat it better than your dick! At least that thing might save your life someday!"

"Sergeant Helmand!"

Tariq turned around. "First Sergeant?"

Noble jerked a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the company CO. "I need to go get encryption codes, call sign info, and authentication codes from the CO. You know what you need to do?"

"Yes First Sergeant!"

"Then fucking get to it!" Noble demanded before jogging away.

Tariq grunted before reaching down to help Corona out of the hatch.

"Sergeant, I don't have any ammo for this," he said, lifting his SMG.

"Nobody has any fucking ammo, they don't give ammo out for training missions! That's what we're doing here. Strap that thing to your thigh, we'll worry about getting bullets later. Our first priority is to load up Lillian!"

Climbing down Lillian's side, Tariq ran to her backside where some quartermasters from the local Colonial Militia were waiting with a couple pallets of live, 120mm shells.

"Come on kid, help me get this shit out," Tariq demanded as he slide his dog tags through the reader and unlocked Lillian's ammunition carousel. He began ripping out the twenty-three kilogram shells, their warheads painted blue to show they were inert training rounds, and began stacking them on the ground out of the way. "Compartment one is for HEAT, two is for SABOT, three for canisters, and four for beam riders(1)."

"Got it!" Corona chirped before reaching down to start helping the quartermasters with the live rounds.

"Hey Sergeant, what else are you going to need?" one of the quartermasters asked him.

"We're going to need about twelve hundred rounds of 12.7 mil for our RWS, and about eight thousand rounds of 7.62 apiece for our coax and commander's turret, and about thirty 73mm grenades for our smoke dispensers," Tariq commanded between grunts. "Twenty smokes, ten incendiary!"

"I'm on it!" one of the militiamen volunteered, and started running towards a nearby Cyclops powered exoskeleton.

"We're also going to need 5mm rounds for our SMGs!" Tariq yelled after him. "Cased rounds!"

"Copy!"

Tariq grabbed another quartermaster by the shoulder. "You guys got any hydrogen fuel around here? Let's get Lillian topped off."

"Who the fuck is Lillian?" the quartermaster asked before shaking his head. "Never mind. Let me go check."

Tariq watched the man run off before turning back to Lillian. So that took care of the ammo and fuel; what else was he going to need? Food and water he supposed. But then again, that wasn't an immediate priority and they could always acquire that at a later date. After all, he still didn't know if the Covenant were doing a quick smash and burn or if it was a full scale invasion. If it was just a smash and burn, then all the Covenant would do was blow the Navy out of the sky and proceed to turn this entire colony to glass at which point, there was nothing Tariq could do to prevent that. If it turned out to be a full scale invasion, there was still a chance they would land ground troops on the other side of the planet, at which point he would have time to prepare. And if they did make a landing near his location, then there was a chance Tariq wouldn't live longer than a couple hours, at which point he wouldn't have to worry about food or water ever again.

"Might want to think about dropping those SABOT and picking up more beam riders instead."

Tariq glanced over his shoulder at the sound of Chenko's voice. Chenko had evidently wandered up and was currently talking to Corona and the other militia working on loading Lillian up. Curious, Tariq walked over to see what was going on.

"What's up? You giving my crew orders again? Jeez, give a man a couple of chevrons and next thing you know, he thinks he's Lord Hood or something," Tariq teased.

Chenko grinned for a moment before quickly sobering up. "Nah, I was just saying you should probably be packing more beam-riders than SABOT rounds."

Tariq glanced at Corona, who was in the middle of loading up a couple SABOTs. "Why?"

"Don't you remember Draco III?"

Tariq involuntarily shuddered. "I try not to," he admitted.

Chenko inclined his head. "Yeah, me too. But we kind of have to. The point is, on Draco III, remember we realized Covenant armor wasn't really our big problem; one or two HEAT shells was usually enough to destroy anything the Covies could field. No, our biggest problem with the constant air attacks cause the Air Force couldn't maintain air superiority. I just remember Duvall bitching non-stop about not having the right weapons to shoot back."

Tariq considered what Chenko just said. It was true, air attacks had proven to be their biggest problem on Draco III: towards the end there, it proved to be next too impossible to travel further than three klicks before they were suddenly under attack by Banshees. And naturally the SPAAGs(2) were never around when they were needed most, so it would be nice if Lillian could defend herself without waiting for outside support...

Tariq looked at Corona. "Yeah. Go ahead and do what he says. Dump the SABOTs, replace 'em with beam riders. That'll make half our ammo reserves missiles: twenty four total."

Corona shrugged then put down the SABOT shell he'd been carrying, picked up a missile, and got back to work.

In the meantime, Tariq had turned back to Chenko.

"Shouldn't you be getting your Armadillo ready?" he asked as Chenko calmly pulled out a fresh pack of cigarettes and cracked it open. Pulling one out, he offered it to Tariq, who took it after a moment's hesitation.

"The crew is loading up on autocannon rounds and Anvil missiles," Chenko replied with a shrug. "I can't do nothing until these Cunt Munchers bring out the small arms ammo."

Tariq grunted in acknowledgement as he triggered the self-igniting end of his cigarette. He sometimes forgot Chenko was an infantryman now.

As they stood around taking a smoke break, Tariq noticed Chenko staring very closely at him.

"What?" Tariq bluntly demanded.

"You alright?" Chenko asked, just as bluntly.

"Yeah, of course I am," Tariq breezily replied. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Chenko shrugged. "I seem to remember you taking the fall of Draco III pretty hard."

"Yeah? Well, if you didn't take that shit pretty hard, then you've got no fucking soul," Tariq snapped. "We left those people there, and they ended up paying the price, didn't they?"

Chenko looked at him closely. "We didn't have a choice," he began, but Tariq wasn't having it.

"Yeah? Well, neither did they," he snapped, letting his cigarette drop out of his mouth. He put it out by viciously stomping on it. "Look, I'm not fucking talking about this right now. What happened, happened. Just focus on the task at hand, that's what's important right now."

He pushed passed Chenko, only to see his outburst had caught Corona's attention, who was now staring at him with a look of concern on his face. The sight infuriated Tariq, who snapped, "What the fuck are you looking at kid? Get the fuck back to work!"

The loud _CLUNG CLUNG_ of a power exoskeleton heralded the return of the Cyclops.

"Hey, I got small arms ammo!" the driver yelled as he deposited the pallet he was carrying on the ground.

Tariq immediately dashed over. Grabbing the prybar sitting on top, he wrenched open one of the wooden crates, revealing three dozen olive drab ammunition cans, each carrying a single two hundred round belt of 7.62x51mm rounds. Tariq immediately grabbed four of them, as well as a hand full of loose rounds.

"Hey! Give me a can!" Chenko urged as he walked back to Lillian.

"Get it yourself you lazy asshole!" Tariq jokingly yelled back.

"Fuck you!"

"FUCK YOU!"

Tariq could hear Chenko laughing.

Returning to Lillian, Tariq popped open all the cans and connected the belts together, before sliding the now extra-long belt into the ammunition feed chute for the coax. As he worked, four more cans were deposited by his feet. He looked up to see Corona standing there with an expectant look on his face. Tariq grunted his thanks, but instead of walking away, Corona dropped to a knee and leaned in close.

"Sergeant," he began, "are you okay?"

Tariq glared at him. "That's none of your fucking business kid."

Corona frowned. "No offense Sergeant, but I think it kind of is. We're crewmates. We ride in the same tank. Our fates are intertwined. Anything happens to the tank will affect both you and me. Plus, practical reasons aside, I kind of like to make sure my friends are okay."

"We aren't friends," Tariq said shortly. "Whoever gave you that idea is a fucking idiot. Look Rook, let me break it down for you: I know what I'm doing. I've done this before. You on the other hand? You are nothing and nobody. If I were you, I wouldn't worry about me, I'd worry about doing my _fucking_ job properly. Because so far? You haven't. So stop sitting around yakking, and go get some 12 mil for the RWS!"

Rather than have the good graces to look offended, Corona seemed even more concerned than before, but nevertheless obeyed.

"Fucking FNGs getting more uppity every day," Tariq muttered darkly under his breath as Corona walked away.

"KILO COMPANY! ASSEMBLE ON THE CO!"

Tariq looked up to see Noble, standing by his company commander's tank, bellowing at the top of her lungs. Suppressing an irritated sigh, Tariq abandoned what he was doing, grabbed his SMG and walked over to where Noble and his CO, Captain Lightfoot, were standing.

"Okay, listen up troopers," Lightfoot barked as soon as the company had assembled. "We got encryption and authentication codes. TCs, check your TACPADs for that information and come see me or the XO after this briefing if you've got any questions. Alright, that's that. Call sign. Until further notice, Kilo Company has been assigned the call sign of Cataphract. We are now Cataphract. I'll say it one more time: Cataphract."

Tariq hastily pulled out something to write that down on. He was riding with the company first sergeant, so that meant Lillian was now officially designated Cataphract-07. Good to know.

"Our sister company," Lightfoot continued, "Joker Company, is call sign Hippeis, our infantry support company is Dragoon, battalion HHC is Lancer, and our FSC is Merkava . Remember these call signs people."

"Now, as of right now, we still don't know what the Covenant intentions for this colony is. We don't know if they're here to conduct a smash and burn operation or what. Whatever they want to do though, the Split-lips _**will**_ need to eliminate all resistance, in orbit at least, to do it. Which means taking on the orbital defense platforms. You veterans know there's only two for them to take on the ODPs: either take out the platform itself, or send down a strike down to take out the platform's ground based power generator. Which is where we come in."

Lightfoot pulled out a holographic map of the area and laid it against the side of his tank so everyone could see it.

"Now, Byzas Station's generator is located roughly thirty klicks due west of here, towards the mountains. As of right now, that installation is being protected by a single, Marine Corps anti-aircraft artillery battery. If the Covies hit that place in force, those Marines wouldn't be able to hold out for long. Therefore, Kilo Company, the rest of 3rd Battalion, accompanied by a platoon of engineers and anti-aircraft guns, will proceed at high speeds down I-270 towards that installation where we will dig in, assume a defensive posture, and hold out until further orders. In the meantime, I want all vehicles to max out weapons and ammo, we're Oscar Mike in ten. Any questions?"

No one spoke up.

"Then let's get to it people! Dismissed!"

 **XXXXX**

 **Camp Hoxha, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0900**

 **Marcus**

The rumbling of heavy vehicles filled the air, and Marcus looked around to see a massive number of tanks, more than he had ever seen in life before, departing from a building on the other side of the base. They drove down the main road before disappearing through one of the base entrances headed... where? Marcus had no idea. Nor did he had any idea as to why there were leaving. Shouldn't they stay here and help them defend the base? After all, they would have a much easier time than Marcus would. He didn't know much about the military, but did know tanks were pretty much invincible.

Marcus jumped when he felt a hand grab his shoulder.

"Come on Marcus, need to keep moving," Dresden urged. "We don't have time to dawdle: we got to get some guns, then go prep our rig, and _then_ get loaded up with some cargo, all before the Covenant start their attack.

Marcus numbly nodded and allowed Dresden to guide him towards the armory. He still couldn't believe it. Covenant? Here? On Actium? Impossible. Actium was an Inner Colony. A lot could be said about the way the UNSC was running this war, but no one could say they weren't doing their best in trying to keep the location of the colonies a secret from the Covenant, especially the inner ones. So how was it the Covenant had found them? And they _had_ to have found them. When Marcus had first heard the news, he had tried to convince himself this was all just one giant, elaborate trick to do... he didn't know what. But with everything he had seen so far, with all the jets flying through the air, the tanks rolling down the street, and all the soldiers, Marcus knew everybody's worst nightmare had come true: Actium was under attack.

And he was stuck here, on the frontlines, when he should have been at home, seeking shelter with the rest of his family! Damn this draft! This wasn't supposed to happen like this!

"Come on Marcus, I know you're worried and probably more than a bit scared. But cheer up! We don't know what the Covenant are up to, so there's a chance they won't actually attack this area," Dresden cheerful announced. "Maybe they'll make landfall on the other side of the planet, and the fighting will take place far from us."

"My family lives on the other side of the planet sir," Marcus miserably reminded him, and for a moment, Dresden's smile wavered.

"Oh. Right," he dumbly said before quickly recovering. "Then the poles. With any luck, maybe they'll land at the planet's poles."

"The Covenant want to kill all humans. Why would they land at a place where there are no humans?" Marcus couldn't help but point out.

Dresden stared at him with an incredulous expression, before he burst out laughing. "Man," he commented, "you are way too young to be this grim. I can see we're going have to work on you. Well then, Mister Grumpy-pants, if the end of the world _**is**_ here, we better make sure we're ready for it, shouldn't we? Let's get some guns."

He grabbed a hold of the door to the armory, opened it, and gestured for Marcus to enter first.

Inside, there was already a long line of soldiers leading up to a pair of windows where rifles were getting issued. Marcus and Dresden waited in silence until it was Marcus' turn.

"Next!"

Marcus stepped up to the window.

"Name, rank, serial number?" the lady standing there demanded.

"Olsen, Marcus T," Marcus immediately recited for the umpteenth time today. "87662, 12457, O, M."

He watched as the lady insert all that information into a data pad.

"What unit are you assigned to honey?" she asked.

Marcus opened his mouth to reply, but then froze when he realized he couldn't actually remember. He could feel his face start to redden as he felt the impatient eyes of everyone else in the room staring at him.

"He's with me," Dresden suddenly said from behind him. "6th Platoon, 707th Transportation Company."

The armorer nodded and made a quick note on her data pad, before glancing at Marcus. "First day?" she gently asked.

Marcus nodded miserably, still embarrassed about not even knowing which unit he was part of.

"Man, you really got the short end of the stick, didn't you? First day, already struggling to figure everything out, and then _boom:_ Covenant attack. Jeez," the armorer commented sympathetically, before disappearing into the back.

She reappeared a few seconds later with an MA37 rifle in hand, of which she laid on the counter. He watched as she recorded the number stenciled on its buttstock before sliding it over.

"Sign here," she commanded as she handed the data pad over.

Marcus signed the spot indicated, then grabbed the rifle. He slipped the sling around his shoulders and let his rifle hang near his waist, feeling a bit awkward and completely out of place.

"You're all set Private," the armorer told him. "Hey – good luck out there!"

"Yeah," Marcus hesitantly replied. "You too I guess."

The armorer nodded before calling out, "Next!"

Moving out of the way so Dresden could take his place at the window, Marcus headed for the door. He didn't know where he was supposed to go next, so he hovered around the area, waiting for Dresden. He emerged several minutes later, carrying a rifle of his own.

"What do we do now Sarge?" Marcus anxiously asked.

"Normally I would say we should go get ammo, but I think it's more important right now we get our rig ready," Dresden replied. "Once the Covenant start attacking, the air is going to get flooded with fighters and it's going to get really hard to get supplies to where they're needed. So yeah... let's go do that. Come on, we're heading to the motor pool."

Dresden hefted his rifle with one hand and started walking away. Marcus quickly plodded after him, anxiously looking around. Dresden's talk of air attacks had made Marcus realize how vulnerable he was out in the open like this, and he couldn't help but nervously look around, half expecting to be attacked at any moment. Every noise made him twitch, and every movement, real or imagined, made him jump.

"Marcus."

Marcus jumped, not expecting Dresden to suddenly call out his name. "Sir?"

"Calm down," Dresden ordered without turning around.

"Sir?"

Dresden stopped and glanced over his shoulder. "Calm… down… If the Covenant were making landfall right now, trust me, we would know it. We're safe at the moment so relax. You're making me nervous."

Marcus nervously swallowed. "Sorry sir," he managed to get out.

"Don't be sorry, just… breath. Okay? I will tell you when it's time to panic."

Marcus nodded in understanding, not trusting himself to speak. Dresden gave him an encouraging smile before he started walking again.

They passed several buildings before reaching a large open area on the other side of the base where dozens and dozens of snow covered M8888 Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks, or HEMTTs(3), were parked. HEMTTs were the main logistic vehicle of choice for the UNSC Army and most Colonial Militias for hauling heavy cargo around on a planet's surface. Essentially a 10x10 flatbed truck, HEMTTs could be configured for a variety of cargo, though they mostly hauled supplies around in large intermodal containers. With a payload capacity of twenty metric tons, HEMTTs were manned by a crew of two or three, all of whom sat in an armored cab located at the front of the vehicle.

Marcus and Dresden weren't the first soldiers there, as several other crews were busy getting their vehicles ready. Dresden ignored them all though as he led Marcus to the second row of HEMTTs before stopping at one in particular, one whose cab had been covered by a olive-drab tarp before being covered in turn by snow.

"Well, this is us. This is our rig," Dresden proudly announced. "This right here? You're looking at the best rig in the entire fleet, bar none. Ain't she a beaut?"

Marcus stared at the truck in question, then quickly glanced at all the other trucks around him. If he was being completely honest, they all looked identical to him. Still, he didn't want to accidently offend the one guy who seemed to know what the hell he was doing so he casted around for something to say.

"She's um, very nice?" Marcus suggested.

"Thanks," Dresden distracted replied. He had slung his rifle over his shoulder and was currently bent over, digging through the snow on the ground. What he was looking for was revealed a moment later when he pulled out the edge of the tarp that covered the cab. "Come on. Help me get this off."

Marcus hastily bent over and grabbed the edge. Together, they managed to knock most of the snow off the cab and onto the ground, before Marcus helped Dresden fold the tarp closed. Tossing the tarp into a toolbox mounted on the side of the HEMTT, Dresden pulled out a shovel and handed it to Marcus.

"Here. Go shovel off as much of the snow as you can from the bed of the truck. I got to check the engine."

Marcus nodded and went to work. It didn't take him long to complete his task. But just as he finished, he happened to look up and see the soldier who had checked him in this morning struggling through the snow towards them. Marcus couldn't remember his name though. What caught Marcus' attention though, was the sheer amount of weapons the man was carrying. The man had a rifle strapped across his back, but he was also balancing a machine gun on his shoulders with one hand, while carrying two ammo cans in the other.

"Orlović! Finally. What were you doing, taking a nap?" Dresden teasingly called out. "Marcus! Go help him!"

"Nah Sarge, I got this," Orlović said with a grunt as he tossed the ammo cans onto the bed of the rig, then gently leaned the machine gun against the side. "Jesus fucking Christ Sarge, I don't get the Army sometimes. Seriously, I don't. Fucking end of the world is coming, we got Covies about ready to attack any second now, and I still got wait like five fucking centuries in line just to pick up my Gimpy? Seriously, what the fuck. You think the armory would be handing out weapons like candy on Halloween."

"Welcome to the Army Soldier, where not even Covenant plasma swords are sharp enough to cut through the red tape," Dresden cheerfully declared. "By the way, Orlović, this here is new guy, better known as Olsen, Marcus T. Marcus, this is the last member of our team, William Orlović, or as he sometimes calls himself, 'Billy-O.'"

Orlović groaned. "I will forever regret telling you that story." He turned to Marcus and glared. "I was in a band in high school and I thought I was being clever. Just call me Orlović because if you call me Billy-O, I swear to God I will fucking shot you in the nads."

"R - right. I'll keep that in mind," Marcus stuttered as he involuntarily crossed his legs. Orlović glared at him, before breaking out in a smile.

"I'm just playing with you bro," he said cheerfully, then abruptly pointed his finger right at Marcus' face. "But seriously, don't call me that."

"Well then. Now that we've got the team assembled, let's talk about what we're going to be doing today," Dresden announced, letting the engine compartment close with a loud _bang._ "We're going to need a driver, a gunner, and someone to monitor the radios. Who wants what?"

Orlović's eyes lit up. "I call dibs on – "

"You can't drive," Dresden interrupted.

"What? Why not?"

"Seriously? You really need to ask? Last time you drove this rig, you backed it up into one of the supply warehouses."

"Hey, that was not my fault!" Orlović protested. "I didn't see it there!"

Dresden stared at him with an incredulous expression on his face. "It was a warehouse Orlović," he said slowly. "It's not like it was packet of, I don't know, peanuts or something."

"It was at a funny angle!"

"It was behind you…" Dresden said, sounding very much like he couldn't believe he was having this conversation. "Whenever you reverse, things come from behind you(4)!"

"Well… if I can't drive, then you shouldn't either!"

"Why not?"

"You're the idiot who gave this truck such a fucking stupid name!"

Orlović pointed to the cab where, for the first time, Marcus noticed the word "Rig" was stenciled in black letters on the front bumper.

"Okay, so it's not the most original name," Dresden sheepishly allowed.

"My three year old niece could have named this truck a lot better than you and considering she named the family dog 'Bunny,' that's saying a lot!"

"Okay, fine," Dresden relented. "So, if you aren't allowed to drive and I'm not allowed to drive, I guess the new guy will have to."

Almost as one, they both turned to look at Marcus, who jumped.

"Who me?" Marcus blurted out. "I couldn't…"

"You graduated from AIT, right?" Dresden asked. "You got your military license?"

"Yes, but…"

"Cool. Orlović, you're on the gun and I'll be on the radio." Dresden glanced at Marcus. "It will be fine. We're going to stick to the highways, there'll be plenty of security and support. Just don't crash."

Marcus opened his mouth to protest, but before he could say anything, he was distracted when a woman came walking up.

"HEY, THEO!" she yelled.

"There's no need to yell Standish, I'm standing right here," Dresden said as he hopped off the bed.

Standish shrugged unapologetically. "LT wants everyone by his rig for a brief," she said.

"Okay. Orlović, Marcus, come on. Marcus, bring your rifle: from this point on, don't go anywhere without it, got it?"

"Yes sir," Marcus said, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. He followed Dresden and Orlović as they walked over to the command rig, which was a 6x6 flatbed variant of the Warthog, with the lieutenant standing on the bed.

"Gather around ladies and gentlemen, let's go over our game plan really quickly," the lieutenant said. "First off, for the guys who just started today, welcome. Normally we'd have a more formal welcome for you, but unfortunately today is very clearly not normal, and you're just going to have to adapt. Sorry."

"Second, our mission. Our priority today is ammunition. Most of the units in our general AO have enough fuel, food, and water to last them a couple of days, but when the Covenant attack in force, which they will, they're going to be burning through ammo pretty quickly. It's our job to make sure they don't run out. Our first priority are the air defense artillery battalions..."

The lieutenant trailed off and Marcus looked around, bewildered, until he saw the woman that had collected the team had her hand raised and was patiently waiting to be acknowledged.

"Yeah Standish?" the lieutenant called out.

"I just have a question sir," Standish began. "But have we actually gotten official confirmation that it's the Covenant attacking us? I mean, everybody is talking like they are, but I don't remember anyone actually _confirming_ it's them."

Marcus quickly thought back on the last few minutes and realized she was right: people just started talking about the Covenant, but no one officially had come outright and confirmed it was them.

For a few seconds, Marcus felt hope blooming. Maybe all this really _was_ one giant training exercise, and people just started getting carried away with the rumor mill. Maybe they really weren't getting attacked.

Marcus' hope though, were immediately dashed when the lieutenant shook his head.

"It's a fair question," he admitted, "but the battalion commander has already confirmed. Plus, the colonial governor's office down in Lygos will be holding a press conference confirming the Covenant presence to the civilian populace soon. In fact," he checked his watch, "they should be holding that any second now. Arty! Anything?"

A soldier poked his out from the cab of the Warthog. "The music just stopped on all radio channels. I think they're about to begin."

"Well why the hell didn't you say anything?" the lieutenant demanded. "Boost the signal and put it on screen; I want everyone to hear this."

Arty nodded and a moment later, a holographic image appeared, depicting a stage with an empty podium bearing the seal of the governor's office sitting on top. Marcus could see and hear the flashing and clicking of cameras, as well as the murmuring of reporters in the background. The room fell silent when an old lady, flanked by a number of politicians and military officers, walked onto the stage. Marcus recognized her as the governor of Actium, though for the life of him, he couldn't remember her name.

 _"Good morning,"_ she began. _"My fellow Actonians, at exactly 8 am this morning, Coordinated Universal Time 00:00, the UNSC put the entire Ambracian System into a state of Winter Contingency: the presence of a Covenant fleet was confirmed to be orbit around Tenedos."_

 _"In light of these events, and in an attempt to facilitate better communication and coordination with the UNSC, I am hereby declaring martial law over the entire colony. All civil and government facilities will be turned over to UNSC military control."_

 _"At this juncture, the intentions of the Covenant are unclear, however as a precaution, the UNSC has already begun preparations for the immediate evacuation of key members of the government and prominent citizens. However until the military has determined exactly where the Covenant intend to strike first, I ask all citizens to remain in your homes and your workplaces until safe evacuation routes can be established and secured: unless there is an emergency, please keep all roads clear so as to allow both the UNSC and Actium militaries the ability to respond to events in a timely manner."_

 _"While the military deals with these catastrophe events, in the meantime, I must remind all Actonians to remember that we are all sworn citizens of the UEG, and to act as so. I implore all citizens to remain calm and civil, and to continue to obey all laws and any commands given by uniformed UNSC military personnel. To all law enforcement officers, I charge you with maintaining order until this crisis has been averted."_

" _Before I finish today, I would like to take a moment to leave you with this reminder: throughout mankind's history, we have constantly been divided whether it be by religious, political, or racial reasons. However, we cannot afford to allow such divisions to continue today. Today, the Covenant are here, and with them, they bring nothing but death and destruction. Their record speaks for itself: the Covenant have proven time and time again they care not for our petty differences. They care not for our culture, our religion, or our way of life. In the eyes of the Covenant, we are nothing but scum, only worthy of extermination."_

 _"On this day and the coming days, I want all citizens to remember who they are. We are not Inner Colonist or Outer Colonist. We are not Loyalist or Innies. We are not white, black, yellow, red, or any other color of the rainbow. We are all humans. Humans. And its humanity versus everyone else in the galaxy; if we are to remain divided, we will surely fall. But together, I promise you, we_ _ **WILL**_ _hold strong!"_

 _"Thank you very much, each and every single one of you. May whatever deity or being or ideal that you believe in see you through these upcoming dark days and I wish you all -"_

 **XXXXX**

 **Byzas, Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0915**

 **Selene**

 _"Good luck."_

The train was silent as Governor Sargsyan walked away from her podium, followed by her entourage, ignoring all the questions the reporters were yelling at her. The image switched back to the two news hosts, who were now joined by a political and military analyst, and all four of them began dissecting exactly what Governor Sargsyan's announcement meant to the people of Actium, and the UNSC as a whole. It was at this point Selene stopped listening; she didn't need an "expert" to tell her what the ramifications of a Covenant invasion were, she read the news every day and quite a few of her friends from high school were in the military and had fought against the Covenant. She knew exactly how devastating and painful the next coming days were going to be.

The Covenant. Here. At Actium.

It shouldn't have been that surprising, honestly. Subconsciously, she had known from the moment she had seen the hundreds of military jets headed for orbit. But she had refused to accept it, and remained clinging on to the hope that it was something else. It was only human nature, Selene supposed, to deny such a horrendous event was occurring.

But now with the governor's announcement, that hope was gone. And all that was left to do was to try and make sense of it all.

"Hey motherfucker, don't you fucking touch me!"

A loud scuffle at the other end of the train drew Selene out of her thoughts, and she looked up to see two young men, kids really, screaming at each other. Before she could do anything, one of them threw a punch, which the other dodged before throwing himself at the other man in retaliation, knocking them both to the ground.

Without hesitation, Selene leapt to her feet and ran to the end of the train to intervene. Fortunately, by the time she had gotten there, a rather burly woman and two old men had grabbed the boys and separated them, but even then, the two boys struggled to attack one another.

"HEY!" Selene yelled as she pulled out her badge and showed it to the assembled group. "Knock it off you two! Calm down before I make you calm down!"

To emphasize her threat, Selene put her free hand on the butt of her stun gun, though she didn't draw it. The action, while not quite enough to make the two boys calm down completely, was at least enough to force them to calm down enough to think rationally.

"Now that I've gotten your attention, what the heck is going on here?" Selene demanded. At once, both boys began to speak.

"This fucking asshole here -"

"Hey, fuck you, you little prick!"

"Alright, enough!" Selene yelled. "Let's try this again. You," she pointed at the kid being held down by the two old men. "What's your story? And without the profanity? There are kids present." Selene jerked her thumb over her shoulder where three young kids were sitting, looking scared.

The young man glanced at the kids and to his credit, had the decently to look ashamed of himself. He visibly composed himself, and Selene nodded at the two old men, who immediately let him go.

The man took a deep breath, before he began. "So, I just came the bank. I've got my entire life savings here in this backpack. All I'm trying to do is go home, get my girlfriend, and get off world before the Covenant attack. But then this as..."

Selene gave him a warning glare.

"...dude came up to me and tried to steal my bag. I grabbed him, naturally, and that was when he started screaming and punching me. I'm the victim here!"

"Its true officer," one of the old men offered. "I saw the entire thing. That young man tried to steal this young man's bag."

Selene nodded before turning to the other man, the one who had originally started shouted. "Well, that's two people against you. Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

"It's _my_ girlfriend," he sullenly said.

"Excuse me?"

"That girl he says he's going home to?" he pointed at the other man. "That's _MY_ girlfriend. Those two... pukes have been sleeping together, **BEHIND MY BACK** , for the last two **MONTHS**! Yeah, you think I didn't know about that?" he roared as the other turned pale. "He takes my girl? Fine. Then I'll take his cash. Seems fair to me."

Selene resisted the urge to sigh. "Okay, first off, I shouldn't have to say this in this day and age, but a woman is not an object that you buy or demand monetary compensation for!"

The young man blinked in confusion, before turning pale. "That's not… that's not what I mean!" he began to stutter in protest, but Selene quickly held up her hand.

"Secondly… look, how old is this lady anyways?"

"Eighteen," both men answered at the same time.

"Then that means she's old enough to make her own decisions. Cheating on her boyfriend, while extremely trashy, is not against the law. Stealing other people's money _**is**_."

The kid stared at her defiantly. "Why? The world is ending. What does it matter what I do now?"

"The world _is_ ending," Selene agreed, "but it hasn't ended _yet._ And _until_ it does, I'm going to need you to continue acting like you're a rational citizen, ready to obey the laws of this city because you see, it's not about you. You're not the only one caught in this situation. We," Selene gestured to everyone else on the train, "are all in the same boat. And if we all start acting out and doing whatever we want, we're all going to fall victim to the Covenant. But if we stay calm and work together, we _all_ might just be able to make it."

Selene stared closely at the kid. She could tell he was wavering, but he wasn't entirely convinced and this time, Selene didn't bother suppress her sigh. She was way too tired for this.

"Look," she told him. "I'm not going to arrest you because obviously this situation is a bit tense. I am warning you though: if you pull another stunt like that again, I _will_ lock you up. As for you," she turned to the other kid. "Secure your bag, go home, but _stay_ home. That goes for everyone here," she said loudly, making sure everyone could hear her. "If you're going to pick up your family from school or work or something, that's fine, but go home as quickly as possible and _stay there_. I know a lot of you are wanting to try and evacuate as soon as possible, but the last thing the military needs is a bunch of people running around like chickens with their head's cut off, flooding the streets. I guarantee you the mayor's office is working on a plan to evacuate everyone from this city, but until it gets implemented, **stay indoors."**

With that, Selene headed back to her seat, wondering how much impact her little speech was going to have. No doubt there still was going to be people, probably from this very train, who would still try and rush towards the spaceports, trying to get offworld as soon as possible, like that kid planned on doing. She didn't have any doubt because honestly, she was half tempted to that herself. The only thing that was stopping her was the fact that she was sworn officer of the law, and as a police officer, her job was to ensure the safety of everyone else in the city before worrying about herself.

So when the train finally reached her stop, Selene dolefully got up and walked off the train towards her precinct station.

Inside, the building was filled with police officers from every shift. The air was filled with the scent of fear and badly suppressed panic as her coworkers ran from room to room, shouting out orders and gathering all sorts of equipment. Selene wasn't sure what the game plan was, and she didn't want to aimlessly run around the building like how everyone else was seemingly doing, so she headed for her lieutenant's office. As she walked towards it, she suddenly remembered all the reports left over from her last shift, and she couldn't help but wonder if she would still need to finish them. Probably not.

"MAKE A HOLE PEOPLE!"

Selene quickly moved to the side as what appeared to be every single officer in the building that was assigned to a SWAT team came pushing their way down the corridor. Every single one of them was fully geared and carrying live weapons, which for this province, was a little bit unusual. Though given the circumstances, it was probably expected. She did have to wonder where they were going though.

"Riddle!"

Selene turned around to see Kingsley poking his head out of his office and gesturing at her. She quickly walked over.

"Nice to see you were able to make it Riddle," he commented.

"Wasn't easy, but I managed," Selene distractedly informed him. "Hey, where's Dawlish and the rest of the SWAT teams going? We get assignments already?"

"-Ish." Kingsley walked behind his desk and gestured for Selene to go ahead and sit down. "You hear that the governor has declared martial law over the entire colony? And that we're no longer taking orders from the mayor's office but UNSC military command?"

"Yeah, I saw the press conference Governor Sargsyan held on my way here. What about it?"

Kingsley reached up to rub his bald head. "Military wants us to round up and arrest every single person that was ever arrest or suspected of the following: murder, rape, theft, and supporting the Insurgency."

Selene raised an eyebrow. "We were able to get warrants for all that?"

Kingsley snorted. "What warrants?"

Selene stared at him. "No warrants? We're just going to pick up people off the street? That doesn't seem wise; their lawyers are going to have a field day!"

"They aren't getting lawyers," Kingsley sighed. "Our orders are to throw them into cells and worry about it later."

Selene was shocked. "But… that's illegal."

"It's martial law Selene." Kingsley plucked his badge off his desk and began fiddling with it. "As part of martial law and 'in the interest of public safety,' certain rights had already been suspended. Rights such as the right to habeas corpus. The right to legal counsel. Right to a jury of peers. That sort of thing."

"And our department is just going along with it?"

"I mean, in some ways, it makes sense. Situation like this, panic starts to set in and people do some dumb things. Plus, there's always that one person who thinks a state of emergency gives them carte blanche to do whatever they want, regardless of the effects it has on their peers."

Selene squirmed uncomfortably in her seat. In some ways, she understood the reasoning. After all, she had already seen an example of someone losing control on the way here. Not only that, she had done some riot training in the past before, and she knew how much time and effort it took to restore order once it had been lost. A small part of her even wanted to admire the military for being preemptive and getting a hand of the situation before it could grow out of control.

At the same time, this stood against everything she ever stood for, and the very reason why she had decided to become a police officer in the first place. She had wanted to protect people, not oppress them. Sure, on paper, all the steps the military was taking to ensure control was great and all, but it was a _very_ slippery slope.

"I'm… not sure how comfortable I feel about this LT," Selene finally admitted.

"I know. I figured you wouldn't. But unfortunately, it's completely out of my control. The best I can do is assign you to other duties so that in case this does blow up in our faces, you won't be part of the responsible party."

Selene shook her head. "Doesn't matter. I'd still be guilty by association."

"Not legally."

"Perhaps. But that's not what I'm worried about."

Kingsley sighed. "The only other thing you could do is resign, but unfortunately, I can't let you do that. I need all the help I can get. Especially yours."

Selene was silent for a moment as she thought about what she should do. On one hand, she wanted no part of this whatsoever. On the other hand, by remaining here staying as a part of the system and supporting Kingsley, she could potentially minimize the damage done.

Of course, how many people told themselves _that_ right before a disaster?

"What exactly would I be doing," she finally asked, figuring she might as well hear the other option before making her decision.

The relief that appeared on Kingsley's face almost made decide to stay. "There are apparently a couple of roads the military wants to remain clear," he informed her. "Despite what the governor has said, we're still going to see a lot of idiots trying to flee the city. Right now, we just don't have the manpower to stop them. What we can do however, is take a couple of patrol cars and make sure these roads the military wants cleared, remains clear."

Selene thought about it for a moment before nodding her head. That, she could do.

"You'll ride with me. We'll take one of the SUVs," Kingsley ordered as he climbed to his feet, prompting Selene to do the same. "But before we do that, we need to go and empty out the drunk tank."

"Do we have permission to do that?" Selene sardonically asked, but Kingsley waved his hand dismissively.

"Don't care if we do. Most of the prisoners in the drunk tank are there for disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace. They're not career criminals; I'm not going to leave them there for the Covenant to kill."

"Fair enough."

Together they walked out of Kingsley's office and headed down to the holding cells. Before they got there though, Kingsley suddenly stopped.

"Hang on. Let me go get some weapons for us before we leave," he told her. He handed her a keycard. "You go on ahead. I'll catch up."

Selene nodded and watched him head for the armory before turning and walking the rest of the way to the holding cells.

"Alright ladies and gentlemen, everybody get up!" Selene bellowed as she entered the room.

"What's going on copper?" one of the occupants asked.

"All of you are getting release," Selene informed them as she opened one of the cells.

"Why?"

"Martial law has been declared."

"Really. What, is there a riot going on?" the first speaker asked.

Selene shook her head, wondering how she was going to break the news. She decided the best thing to do was just admit the truth outright. "No, worse. The UNSC has declared Winter Contingency. The Covenant are here."

"What!?" one of the other occupants exclaimed, leaping up from the bench he'd been laying on. He looked vague familiar to Selene, though she couldn't remember why.

"The Covenant are here," Selene repeated. "They haven't made landfall yet, but it's only a matter of time. We're releasing you all so you can go back to your families and get ready for evacuation. Come on everybody, let's go."

"Shit! I got to go call my wife!" the initial speaker yelled, before running out of the cell and out the door. He was quickly joined by the rest of the drunk tank. Selene started to join them when someone called out, "Officer Riddle, could I ask a question?"

Selene turned around. It was the familiar looking man. "Yeah?" she asked.

"If we're getting sent home to go cower with our families, what exactly are the BPD's finest going to be doing?" he asked, sounding curious.

"Maintain order. Hopefully," Selene informed him.

"You're going to need some help."

Selene blinked at that. That was a statement, not a question. "Who are you again?"

The man waved his hand in greeting. "Joshua Shin. You arrested me last night for disorderly conduct?"

Ah. She thought he looked familiar. "Oh, right!" Selene exclaimed. "Mr. Do-You-Know-Who-I-Am! You sober up pretty quickly. Anyways, sorry, but I don't think we're deputizing civilians right now."

"I'm not a civilian. I'm an airman. SF, specifically," Shin informed her.

Selene shook her head. "I don't know what that is."

"Security Forces. It's the Air Force version of military police."

Selene looked over her shoulder to see Kingsley entering the room with a shotgun in hand and carbine slung over his shoulder.

"Military police, huh?" Selene echoed. Then realization struck her, and she whirled on Shin. " _You're_ a fucking **cop**!? Then what the fuck was up with all those insults last night, huh?"

Shin gave a sheepish grin. "Ah. Right. About that… Um, I am really, really sorry about all that. I had _way_ too much to drink and… I wasn't in my right mind. I didn't mean anything I said last night, and I'm very, very sorry for insulting you like that."

"Too much to drink?" Selene incredulous repeated. "If you're a cop, you should know that's no excuse for your behavior!"

Shin hung his head in shame. "I know. And again, I'm really sorry for that."

"If you're in the Air Force, shouldn't you be returning to your unit right now instead of trying to help us out?" Kingsley asked before Selene could berate him any further. Selene and Shin turned to him.

"I'm stationed aboard the UNSC _Richard Bong(5)_ , which came down to the surface for some minor hull repairs and upgrades," Shin explained. "But if the carrier isn't in orbit by now, then it's not going anywhere, and I might as well stay here where I can do some good. And try to make up for my behavior last night," he added, jerking his head in Selene's direction.

"Well, I for one, am alright with that," Kingsley declared. He turned to Selene. "Officer Riddle? What's your opinion?"

Selene thought about it for a moment. Truth be told, they probably could use the help. "Okay, yeah. We could use the help." She suddenly whirled around and point her finger right at Shin's face. "But no more alcohol for you, got it?"

Shin chuckled. "Fair enough," he allowed.

"Great!" Kingsley cheerfully exclaimed.

"Let's go get you a weapon and a vest."

* * *

1\. Despite their names, I don't actually intend for them to be laser guided munitions. I'm just using the term "beam-riders" as a generic term for tank fired missiles.

2\. SPAAG: **S** elf- **P** ropelled **A** nti- **A** ircraft **G** un

3\. HEMTTS, or **H** eavy **E** xpanded **M** obility **T** actical **T** ruck take their names from the real world M977 HEMTT, an 8x8 armored vehicle manufactured by Oshkosh Corporation and currently used by several militaries around the world, most notably, the US Army, for heavy logistic transport. Unlike the US Army version though, the HEMTT Marcus and his team are riding in would actually be based on the 10x10 Oshkosh vehicle currently used by the US Marine Corps, called the **L** ogistic **V** ehicle **S** ystem **R** eplacement, or LVSR. I just decided to stick with the name "HEMTT" because honestly, to me, it sounds cooler than "LVSR."

4\. The backing up gag (it was at a funny angle!) has been blatantly stolen from the 2000 British comedy film _Snatch_ , directed by Guy Ritchie.

5\. The UNSC _Richard Bong_ is named for US Army Air Force pilot, Major Richard Ira Bong (yes, that is his real name.) Major Bong was credited with shooting down 40 Japanese fighters in the Pacific Theater, making him America's highest scoring fighter ace of World War II. In December of 1944, he was awarded the Medal of Honor for volunteering to fly combat missions in the months of October and November of 1944 over Borneo and Leyte, despite being on flight instructor status at the time. Major Bong was killed on August 6, 1945 (coincidently on the same day Hiroshima was bombed, marking the first time a nuclear weapon was used in the history of warfare) while acting as a test pilot for America's first fighter jet, the P-80 "Shooting Star." Major Bong was 24 years old.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

 **UNSC** _ **Trenchard,**_ **Somewhere in Slipspace  
May 6, 2545  
0850**

 **Zelda**

 _"Attention all call signs: we are t minus thirty seconds to re-emergence to real space."_

Zelda excitedly sat up in his seat. He and the rest of the squadron had been sitting idly in their Broadswords for the last fifteen minutes and it was beginning to wear on him. It was always surprising to him, given how large his Broadsword was, how little room there actually was in the cockpit. So any extended amount of time spent sitting in there, not doing anything, was usually enough to drive him crazy.

 _"Alright Omega Flight, you heard the music,"_ Bellum announced over SQUADCOM as a light over the hanger doors turned red. _"Stay close to your partners and get ready to dance. You all should know by now what we're gunning for, so let's get out there and get it done."_

Zelda absentmindedly nodded his head as he prepped his landing gear to release the moment the hanger doors opened. Apparently there was a crippled Covenant destroyer out there that was just begging to be destroyed. It had positioned itself in a fairly dense debris field which, while preventing the UNSC from destroying it with long-range indirect strikes, allowed for plenty of avenues for small, one man fighters to get in close and finish the job. Furthermore, according to reports, half the destroyer's weapons had been destroyed, including ninety percent of its point defense guns.

It was almost a shame, really, how easy this mission was going to be. Zelda had been hoping for more of a challenge. But then again, blowing away Covenant was always fun, so he would take what he got.

 _"T minus ten seconds,"_ the announcement came over their headsets _. "Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two._ _ **One**_ _."_

Zelda could feel the entire carrier rapidly deaccelerate as it dropped out of slipspace and back into real-space. At the same time, Zelda watched as the hanger bay doors open up all the way before the light turned green.

 _"All squadrons: launch, launch, launch."_

Zelda punched the button that released his magnetic clamps and immediately floored it. By default, he was confined to using his maneuvering thrusters as he was too close to the other fighters and the exhaust from his main engines ran the risk of damaging them, but as soon as he was clear of the hanger doors, they automatically kicked in. Zelda rocketed away from the ship until he was about half a klick away, before conducting a series of acrobatic maneuvers. This, this is what he loved about being a fighter pilot. Not necessarily the speed or the bragging right, though admittedly both were very nice, but the absolute freedom to do pretty much whatever he liked. He was his own man, in control of his own destiny.

" _Zelda, get your ass back here right now,"_ Bellum snapped at him over the radio.

Zelda smirked to himself before executing an Immelmann turn. Throwing himself into a barrel roll, he punched his right side thrusters and spun around, drifting into position behind Odessa's fighter. "Sorry boss," Zelda said, completely unapologetic. "Just stretching my wings."

He heard Odessa snort over the radio.

 _"Now that Zelda is done wasting fuel,"_ Bellum said, somewhat sardonically, _"everyone form up on me. We need to fall into formation with the rest of_ Trenchard's _fighter squadrons."_

Zelda scoffed, but nevertheless did as he was ordered. He followed Bellum as she led the squadron around to the top of the _Trenchard_ where the nearly two hundred and ten fighters that made up the carrier's fighter compliment were gathered, as well as all the other fighter squadrons from Actium's surface the _Trenchard_ had managed to pick up before leaving. It should have been an impressive sight, all these jet fighters gathering in one spot, except for one thing: roughly ninety percent of the fighters gathered there weren't Broadswords, but F-99 "Wombats." AKA, unmanned drones.

That was the biggest change the _Trenchard_ -class brought to the table when compared to its predecessor: full integration of artificial intelligence to _ALL_ aspects of a ship's functions, most notably its fighter compliment. AIs could always control certain aspects of a warbird, but only with permission from the human crew, and only limited access at that. The _Trenchard_ was the first class of warbirds within the entirety of the UNSC where AIs not only had full access to everything, but were in the fact the primary operators of the warbird, with the human crew being used to supplement the AI as opposed to vice versa.

As a fighter pilot, Zelda was strongly opposed to the change. He understood the reasoning of course: the Air Force had been suffering from a massive personnel drain in the last two decades, not only due to battlefield casualties, but to individual augmentations to other services, the Navy primarily, as well as low recruitment numbers. The Air Force needed some way to make up for the shortfall, and Department of the Air Force had decided AIs were the way to go.

But the risk involved...

Zelda was not a Luddite, nor was he one of those guys who believed an AI uprising was about to occur any time within his lifetime. But the idea of allowing a single entity access to so much firepower just didn't sit well with him. What if the AI got hacked? Or jammed? Or went rogue? Or, the most likely scenario, became rampant and decided to defect? What then? Who could stop it then?

Plus, if this trend of using unmanned drones for fighters continued, Zelda would see himself out of the job soon enough, which honestly might be his worst nightmare.

 _"ZELDA!"_

Zelda jumped at Odessa's unexpected shout over their private channel.

"What," he irritably snapped.

 _"Wake up. Bellum is calling for you."_

"What? Fuck."

Zelda hastily changed channels in time to hear Bellum saying, _"Omega-6, do you copy?"_

"Yeah this Zelda. I mean, Omega-6, standing by," Zelda hurried announced. He could hear a collective sigh sounding over the radio.

 _"Omega-6, when I say sound off in sequence, I_ mean _sound off!"_ Bellum snapped.

Zelda shrugged. "What can I say? I was busy enjoying the view," he told her flirtatiously, looking in her direction and making sure to waggle his wings. "Nothing sexier than a woman wearing a flight suit."

Bellum was close enough to Zelda, he could see her face palming.

 _"Focus, Zelda,"_ she barked. _"This is some serious shit, okay? I need all my pilots ready to bring their A game. We need to rendezvous with the fighter squadrons from the_ Pégoud _, so stay focused."_

"Copy."

They broke away from the _Trenchard's_ orbit and headed in the direction where the _Pégoud_ had emerged from slipspace. A massive asteroid was all that stood between them and the _Pégoud_ 's fighters. Flying around the giant floating rock, Zelda and his squadron emerged from around it to see -

 _"Um, this might be a stupid question but: where's the rest of the task force?"_ Zelda heard Betros politely ask over the radio.

Under normal circumstances, Zelda might have cracked some joke about Betros being a puss for being so polite. But truth be told, Zelda was having a hard time comprehending just exactly what he was seeing: there were no UNSC ships present _at all_ on the other side. The _Pégoud_ , the Navy destroyers that were supposed to have accompanied them, even the _Trenchard's_ own gunship escorts. None of them were here. In fact, aside from the fighters that had arrived with the _Trenchard_ , there were no friendlies within a hundred kilometer radius.

"Where the fuck are the rest of our ships?" Zelda demanded to know as he checked his air radar. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't we leave Actium with two carriers, seven destroyers, and like, forty gunships? Where the _hell_ did they all go?"

 _"I have no idea,"_ Bellum admitted, sounding worried.

 _"Hang on, I got them!"_ Odessa exclaimed. _"Zoom out your air radar. Friendly IFFs, about fifty thousand klicks away, direction three seven five."_

 _"What are they doing all the way out there?"_ Betros nervously asked.

 _"Fucking slipspace jumps,"_ Bellum replied, sounding exasperated. _"We missing the emergence point by at least twenty-five thousand kilometers."_

 _"I thought we were locked onto a guidance beacon?"_

 _"Yeah, which is why it's twenty-five thousand klicks, not twenty-five thousand megameters. Or inside an asteroid. We got close but, even with guidance beacons, our slipspace engines still aren't that accurate,"_ Bellum explained with a sigh. _"The real question is, which direction did we fall short: did we emerge closer to the target, or further away?"_

"We must have dropped out of slipspace further away because I don't see -"

Zelda's next words were caught in throat when his radar abruptly lit up with hundreds of red dots. Nearly ten thousand kilometers away, an asteroid had shifted orbit, revealing their target, surrounded by two _very_ intact _CRS_ -class light cruisers, as well as over two hundred Covenant fighters, all of which immediately began heading in their direction.

 _"Ah shit,"_ Zelda heard Odessa sigh.

" _CONTACT_!" someone else yelled.

 _"Attention! Incoming enemy contacts bearing seven zero six one three three! Count, two hundred plus fighters and three warships!"_

 _"Well, that ain't good,"_ someone glibly noted.

"No shit," Zelda muttered to himself.

 _"What are we doing? Falling back to the_ Trenchard _?"_

 _"Too late for that. Look! The_ Trenchard _is spinning up her main thrusters! She's falling back!"_ another person reported.

Zelda glanced at his rear scopes and, sure enough, the _Trenchard_ was pushing it's way further into the debris field, towards Tenedos proper and away from the incoming Covenant. The sight didn't really surprise him as it was standard operating procedure: while carriers were equipped with all sorts of missile and gun turrets, they were intended to be more of a last ditch defense. A carrier's real defensive power came from keeping their distance from the enemy, while their offensive power come from their fighter compliment and escorts.

But if none were around...

 _"Crap crap crap! Captain, what are we doing?"_ Betros could be heard asking.

Zelda couldn't help but laugh. "What do we do? We grab our ankles and bend over cause we're about to get fucked."

He had meant that as a joke, but clearly someone else had felt that way as, even as he spoke, a number of red zones appeared on his HUD.

" _Alright, Omega Flight, listen up!"_ Bellum snapped, cutting through the chatter. _"Forget about that destroyer, we've got to defend the_ Trenchard! _The rest of the task force is making their way towards us at max burn, but until friendlies can arrive, we've got to keep those fighters away from our ship! If the_ Trenchard _goes down, then we're stuck out here. See all those red zones on our HUD? Stay out of them unless you want to get hit by gunfire from the_ Trenchard _otherwise, everybody, spread out!"_

Even as she spoke, Odessa abruptly peeled away and Zelda hastily maneuvered to follow him. They moved away from the rest of the squadron until Betros and Bellum were hidden from visual contact by a bunch of asteroids, but not from radar.

 _"Arm all weapons and prepare for a dogfight,"_ Bellum ordered. _"We're going straight in, and it's going to get messy."_

 _"We're not engaging with missiles?"_

 _"Can't get a proper lock at this range because of Covenant ECM and even if we could, there's too much stuff in the way. We need to get closer."_

Zelda felt a grin spread across his face as he pushed down on his throttle and felt his engines respond in kind. "Now this is where the fun begins."

 _"You and I have very different ideas as to what constitutes as fun, you know,"_ he heard Odessa reply. He hadn't realize he had said that last part out loud.

 _"Uh, I suppose now would be a bad time to ask for some tips on how to deal with these guys?"_ Betros asked over TEAMCOM, sounding nervous.

"Tips? Yeah, don't die," Zelda sarcastically pointed out.

 _"Zelda, shut up,"_ Bellum snapped. _"Betros, stay close to me, but not too close you can't maneuver. It's going to get really tight in certain places. Whatever you do, don't try to solo these fuckers because you will get swarmed."_

 _"Yeah, and if you happen to get behind one of those big fighters, the Seraphs, whatever you do, don't stop shooting until you see it blow up. Between their shields and their armor, those things are like MBTs: they can take a surprisingly insane amount of damage and still keep flying,"_ Odessa added.

With everyone else giving advice, Zelda decided to add his two cents. "Your big problem is going to be Banshees, Betros," he warned. "There's a lot more of them, and they're all over the place, and you're going to be tempted to try and dogfight them: don't. Because our Broadswords aren't dedicated space fighters, we lack some of the maneuvering thrusters required to pull off some truly epic maneuvers needed to take these guys out. A Banshee has no such restrictions and will out turn and out maneuver you every time." Zelda paused. "Unless you're a master ace pilot like me."

He heard Odessa let out a derisive snort, which he ignored.

"One weakness Banshees have is their weak armor and slow acceleration, so all you really got to do is zoom in, hit them with a burst from your 30mil, and keep moving. Got it?"

 _"Got it,"_ Betros replied.

 _"Good. Above all, like Zelda helpfully pointed, try not to die,"_ Bellum told him. _"In fact, consider that a blanket order: none of you have permission to die today."_

Zelda laughed. "You don't have to worry about me boss: that's not on the books for me!"

 _"Right,"_ Bellum said, sounding unimpressed. _"Good luck everybody."_

The radio went silent.

Zelda glanced at his HUD. From the moment the Covenant had appeared on his scopes, his targeting computer had been compiling data non-stop, calculating firing solutions and other tactical data, to determine the most effective range to engage, which it displayed as a countdown timer in the top left hand corner of his HUD. They were thirteen seconds away.

Seven seconds.

His HUD highlighted a trio of Banshees closest to his position and he quickly armed two Medusa missiles and dropped his crosshairs over one of them, obtaining a lock. Already, there was an orange circle around one of them, indicating Odessa's lock. Behind his oxygen mask, Zelda licked his lips out of nervous habit.

Three seconds.

Abruptly the Covenant open fired! The entire Covenant line just opened up, sending a wall of plasma in their direction.

Zelda felt his eyes involuntarily widen as the Banshees sent three fuel rod cannon shells in his direction, but he ruthlessly suppressed the urge to panic. With an understanding born out of countless hours of flight time together, both Odessa and Zelda non-verbally agreed to wait until the last minute before punching their thrusters and throwing their fighters to the side behind a nearby asteroid.

The fuel rod cannons arched in their direction as they began track them, but weren't able to turn fast enough and slammed into the asteroid, which exploded into a thousand fragments. A _TOCK TOCK_ noise, like hail hitting a tin roof, filled Zelda's ears as his Broadsword was bombarded by these fragments, but they weren't enough to distract him from reacquiring his lock.

"Fox one!" he yelled into the radio and pulled the trigger.

Two missiles, one from each wing, immediately launched off their racks and sped towards the Banshee, leaving a visible white contrail in their wake. The Banshee pilot immediately threw himself into a roll, while at the same time emitting a visible pulse which caused the incoming Medusas to lose their lock and miss. But Zelda had predicted something like that would have happened and had already followed up with another two missiles. The missiles slammed into the Banshee, which disappeared in a short but violent explosion.

"Ha!" Zelda triumphantly crowed. "I got one! Planted two missiles up his fucking ass!"

 _"Great. Is it over then?"_ Odessa distractedly replied.

Zelda winced as a plasma bolt splashed against his armored cockpit, but fortunately doing no damage. "Um, no?"

 _"Then shut up and keep flying!"_

Zelda grinned. Odessa always got a bit bitchy when fighting.

His HUD let out a loud shrill, indicating an incoming projectile.

"Chaff!" Zelda spat out while at the same time, throwing himself into an aileron roll. The fuel rod cannon came streaking in, just missing his left wing as it arched at the last second towards his decoys and exploded behind him.

 _"Banshee, left flank!"_ Odessa yelled and Zelda glanced to his left to see a Banshee, plasma cannons blazing, coming straight at him.

Unexpectedly, the Banshee stopped firing and ignited his gravity boost. He rocketed towards Zelda on an intercept course, as if he intended to ram him.

"5, dive!" Zelda barked even as he banked then yanked back on his stick and began to climb.

Odessa and Zelda quickly crossed paths to confuse the Banshee, and Zelda glanced up in time to see the Banshee shoot by in the space that had formed between them, missing his Broadsword by a meter or so. Zelda moved to follow the Banshee, but then a trio of Wombats passed by in front of them, pursued by two Seraphs. Obviously, there were no pilots in the Wombats so it was no tragic loss if the three of them were destroyed, but the chance to kill a couple of Seraphs was too good for Zelda to pass up, so he banked to pursue them instead.

 _"6, focus fire on the one on the right,"_ Odessa ordered. _"I'll burn out his countermeasures with AAMs, you take out his shields, then we both follow up with guns."_

"Got it," Zelda said even as the Seraphs fired and one of the Wombats disintegrated.

He watched as an orange circle began to pass over the Seraph, but at that point the Covenant were aware of their presence and were beginning to evade. Zelda could see Odessa struggling to maintain a lock.

"Anytime now sweetheart," Zelda said impatiently.

 _"Shut up!"_

Odessa fired a spread of five missiles. The first two immediately veered off course as their targeting computers were jammed by the Seraph. The third one went flying off to who knows where, following a series of decoys. The last two managed to get close, but were then destroyed by the Seraph's hard-kill APS.

 _"Shoot it!"_ Odessa demanded, but Zelda had already fired four missiles. He hadn't bothered wasting time by trying to obtain a lock, so the first two missed entirely, but the second two slammed home, causing a blue bubble to appear then disappear just as quickly as the missiles exploded.

"Guns, AP!" Zelda barked, then laid into the trigger.

Chunks of armor began flying off the Seraph as the 30mil armored piercing shells ripped into it, and the Seraph began trailing smoke. But before Odessa or Zelda could finish it, the Seraph's wing mate banked to the right, placing himself between his damaged friend and the Broadswords' guns. The new Seraph's shields lit up, stopping all the gunfire cold.

"That's not going to help very much," Zelda taunted, then banked to the left to go wide in an attempt to shoot around the undamaged Seraph. The undamaged Seraph reflexively moved to intercept, but in that moment, the pilot had forgotten there were _two_ Broadswords chasing them. In the split second the target was clear, Odessa had fired.

A Medusa slammed into the damaged Seraph, blowing off one of its articulating tails. Blue flames began shooting out of the rear, but unsurprisingly, the Seraph continued flying. The undamaged Seraph quickly began juking back and forth in front of them, trying to block both Odessa and Zelda, but he wasn't fast enough and Zelda was able to plant another two Medusas into the crippled Seraph. Annoyingly, the Seraph wasn't destroyed and instead, continued to fly.

"God damn, fucking die already," Zelda spat, firing another missile which was intercepted by the other Seraph.

 _"6, stop wasting ordnance and break off,"_ Odessa barked. _"I don't think they see that meteoroid in front of them."_

"Fuck," Zelda swore. He really wanted that kill, but he nevertheless did as he was ordered.

The split-lips flying the Seraphs must have been too busy searching for where Zelda was going because they didn't even try to stop or evade the meteoroid. The crippled Seraph slammed into the rock at high speeds and exploded while the second flew right into the debris and disappeared. It didn't seem likely he would have survived that, but Zelda went ahead and put a missile into the mess, just for good measure.

"Hey, that still counts as my kill, right?" he asked Odessa as they headed to where the heaviest fighting seemed to be taking place.

 _"That_ _ **hardly**_ _seems important right now."_

"Maybe to you," Zelda petulantly replied. "But I did most of the hard work; I should get at least partial credit for those two."

Before Odessa could respond, a voice cut through all the noise on the radio.

 _"This is Tango Charlie Tango to all call signs! A squadron of Banshees have broken through our fighter screen and are headed for the_ Trenchard _! All available fighters, move to intercept! I say again, all available fighters needed at the_ Trenchard _, over!"_

 _"This is Omega-5 and 6,"_ Odessa smoothly said over the radio. _"We're en route, over."_

 _"Copy that Omega! Hurry!_ Trenchard _, out!"_

Without saying another word, Odessa and Zelda punched in their afterburners and headed straight to the last known location of the Trenchard, linking up with a flight of Wombats that seemed to be headed in the same direction.

"Hey, you see these guys anywhere?" Zelda asked, glancing at his radar then looking around outside. "You'd think a kilometer long ship wouldn't be that hard to spot."

 _"Should be able to see it around this next meteoroid."_

They sped around the meteoroid and there, several dozen dozen klicks in the distance, was the _Trenchard_. The ship was making its way through the field toward Tenedos where, Zelda could only presume, they could hide among the gas dwarf's atmosphere. For now though, the entire ship was ablaze with anti-aircraft fire; missile contrails, 50mm tracers, and chaff was getting thrown around in all directions. Most of the fire was directed upwards, towards the edge of the field where Zelda spotted a squadron of Banshees darting between the rocks. In this area, Tenedos' rings were only five klicks wide so by the looks of it, the Banshees had gone up and out into open space where they could race at full speed to catch up to the _Trenchard_ without worrying about crashing into anything.

"Banshees, up high, top of the field!" Zelda warned. "Must be the squadron the control tower was talking about!"

 _"That's funny,"_ Odessa commented. _"I was about to say the same thing, only, I was going to point out they were_ below _the field."_

"What?"

Zelda looked around and when he couldn't see what Odessa was talking about, he inverted his fighter. Sure enough, there was a _second_ squadron of Banshees approaching the _Trenchard_ from _below_.

 _"Huh,"_ Odessa commented. _"You know, I don't think the_ Trenchard _has spotted that squadron; they're not firing on them."_

"Good," Zelda grunted. "More kills for us. See if you can't get these Wombats to deal with that squadron up there, free us up to deal with the guys down there."

 _"What the fuck? How do I even talk to an AI piloted plane? What do I even refer to these guys as?"_ Odessa complained.

"I don't know, I don't speak in ones and zeros. Try calling them by their plane number."

Zelda watched as Odessa climb until he was parallel to one of the Wombats.

 _"Echo Tango four one six,"_ Zelda heard him call out into the radio. _"Do you copy?"_

 _"Affirmative, Omega, Five."_

Zelda involuntarily shivered as a robotic voice filled his headset. He always hated the voice of dumb AIs, they were so emotionless and cold. It was kind of creepy.

 _"Hey! You focus on that squadron the_ Trenchard _is shooting at! We're going after the ones down below, you copy?"_

The was a moment of silence and Zelda could almost hear the gears turning on the Wombat as it swiveled its camera around to see what Odessa was talking about.

 _"Affirmative, Omega, Five,"_ the AI finally said, and the flight of Wombats quickly pulled away.

"Fucking AIs," Zelda muttered.

 _"Forget about them. Follow me in Six, I'm thinking we give these guys the one-two punch. I'll go in, draw their attention, you follow up and taken them out. You with me?"_

"Yeah, just waiting on you."

 _"Good. On my mark... mark!"_

Odessa immediately dove straight down. Zelda counted up to three in his head, then quickly followed suit.

Bursting out of the field, Zelda nearly flew into the Banshee wreckage Odessa had left behind in his wake, only missing it at the last second when he reflexively jerked to the left. Recovering, Zelda began searching for targets. He was behind about a dozen Covenant Banshees, all chasing and shooting at one Broadsword that was flying in front of them: Odessa. They hadn't spotted Zelda yet, but he knew that could change at any second so he hastily passed his crosshairs over every single Banshee, armed a handful of missiles, and fired.

 _WOOSHWOOSHWOOSH!_

A dozen missiles launched from Zelda's bomb bay and wings, each Medusa hunting its own individual Banshee. The Covenant pilots began to react but for most of them, it was simply too late. It was like watching fireworks on Unification Day. Instantly, nine blue fireballs lit up the area.

But Zelda wasn't done yet. Zipping behind one of the survivors, Zelda began matching the split-lips' every move until his crosshairs turned red.

"Guns, HE!" Zelda commanded, then pulled the trigger.

 _BRRRRRTTTTTTT!_

Zelda could see white flashes as each 35mm shells exploded upon impact. The Banshee took maybe six hits before the pilot ejected, his plane exploded underneath him. Unfortunately for the Elite, his ejection put him right in Zelda's path. Zelda didn't even try to dodge.

 _SPLAT!_

The sound of something soft hitting his hull filled his ears and Zelda grinned. Maybe after the battle he could talk Bellum into letting him keep that as his nose art.

In the meantime, the remaining two Banshees broke away from Odessa and began circling back to the asteroid ring where the tight quarters would give their planes' agility and maneuverability the advantage.

"Oh no you don't," Zelda hissed. "I didn't say you could leave."

He was beginning to line up his shot when suddenly, both Banshees flipped their aircraft backwards in a somersault. As Zelda whipped by underneath, he looked up in astonishment as both Banshees passed by overhead, mere meters from his cockpit. Then the Banshees were behind him and suddenly, the dynamic had changed: instead of the hunter, Zelda was now the hunted.

 _"Zelda, you got two on your tail!"_

"No shit!" Zelda yelled as the space around him exploded with plasma fire. Under normal circumstances, Zelda would have just punched his afterburners and run away, but they had reentered Tenedos' rings, and Zelda needed his maneuvering thrusters to avoid crashing into an asteroid.

 _"Hang on Six, I'm coming!"_ Odessa yelled but glancing at his radar, Zelda knew he would be atomized long before Odessa could acquire a lock. If he was going to get out of this, Zelda needed to save himself.

"Don't worry fam, I got this," Zelda said as confidently as he could.

"At least I think I do," he muttered more quietly to himself.

Dodging a fuel rod cannon shell, Zelda quickly prepped his engines.

"Okay my dudes," Zelda said out loud as soon as he was ready. "Okay. You wanna play rough? Okay! Say hello to my little friend!"

At that, Zelda shunted all his power from his rearward thrusters to the maneuvering thrusters on the underside of his plane, causing it to do a backflip, similar to what the Banshees had to him only moments ago. But because he was in space and he hadn't bothered canceling out his forward motion, Zelda found himself flying _backwards_.

Without bothering to wait for a lock, Zelda started lobbing missiles as soon as he saw the Banshees appear in his HUD. He got lucky with his first missiles, clipping the left gravity pod on one of the Banshees and sending it spiraling out of control and into a nearby meteoroid. The other though, proved to be a far more difficult target as he actually began _shooting down_ Zelda's incoming missiles. Zelda was about to switch to guns when the Banshee abruptly broke away, pursued by a Medusa missile. Seconds later, there was violent blue explosion.

 _"Zelda, watch out! Meteoroid. Meteoroid! METEOROID!"_

Zelda glanced behind him and swore. He was on a collision course with a fairly large meteoroid.

"Full power, main engine!" Zelda yelled, and he could feel his Broadsword responding. His main engines roared to life and he could feel himself slowing down, but not fast enough. He had been going way too fast and he was just too close to the meteoroid. There was no doubt: he was going to hit.

 _"LINK!"_

"Ah fuck!" Zelda yelped, then did the first thing that came to mind: arming two missiles, he ejected them from his racks on the top of his wings, counted up to two in his head, and then remotely set them off.

 _ **KABOOM!**_

As there was no atmosphere in space, Zelda couldn't actually hear the explosion as the missiles detonated, but it didn't matter as his brain automatically filled in the gap. Shrapnel sprayed the topside and cockpit of his Broadsword, one of which hit hard enough to leave a crack in the outer layer of his windshield, but the shockwave was just enough to push his Broadsword out of the way of the meteoroid. Zelda nearly pissed himself when he saw the lumpy surface of the asteroid pass within _millimeters_ of his canopy. Then he was clear, and moving slow enough to reorientate himself.

"5, what you yelling for? Don't you know I gots this?" Zelda arrogantly said as best he could, glad Odessa couldn't see his entire body trembling, which would have revealed the lie for what it was.

 _"You know, one of these days I'm going to die,"_ Odessa conversationally began. _"But it's not going to be because I got shot down or something silly like that. No, it's going to be because of ALL THE FUCKING HEARTATTACKS YOU GIVE ME!"_

"That's cause you're too high strung Five. You need to get laid," Zelda told him with a nod, then slyly added, "Maybe we can find you another Odessan 'girl.'"

 _"Whoa, okay, hold up. I told you we don't talk about that."_

Zelda laughed, feeling the relief of actually being alive wash over him.

" _Omegas-5 and 6, what's your twenty?"_

" _We're in sector sixteen, heading back up to thirty-three,"_ Odessa responded.

" _Negative, stay where you are! I've got fighters coming out of my ass! My right thrusters are bent… I can't shake 'em! Need backup, ASAP!"_

" _Copy, we're on our way! 6, you got eyes on?"_

"Negative, searching now," Zelda reported as he glanced around the area. "Wait – I got visual! Sector thirty seven, bearing four seven three heading right towards us!"

" _Yeah, okay, I got them. Well, that doesn't look good. How do you want to handle this?"_

Zelda studied the scene on his radar. Bellum and Betros were weaving in and out between the meteoroids, being pursued by five Banshees and one Seraph. Betros' Broadsword appeared to be fully intact, but Bellum's bird was trailing a lot of black smoke.

"That Seraph is the biggest threat," Zelda announced. "Got to take him out before we do anything else."

" _Yeah, I know. Any ideas?"_

Zelda shrugged, even though he knew Odessa couldn't see him. "I say we flying straight at him, head on, see who blinks first. Might be able to get those Banshees to split."

" _Pretty dangerous."_

"Meh. What's life without a bit of danger every now and then?"

"… _Why do I let you talk me into doing these things? Okay, well, let's not stand on ceremony then. Let's do this! Follow me in!"_

Zelda grinned, then punched in his afterburners and fell in line behind Odessa. As they sped through the field, Zelda could hear Odessa over the radio.

" _Omega-Leader, Omega-2, this is 5 and 6, we're coming straight at you, head on. On my mark, I want you to crisscross, then split up off in opposite directions. We'll take out the threat on your six, then rendezvous in Sector 12, copy?"_

" _Copy that Omega-5,"_ came Betros' immediate and nervous response.

" _I hope you idiots know what you're doing,"_ was all Bellum said.

"Oh, ye of little faith," Zelda muttered to himself as he began arming weapons.

In the distance, he could see Bellum and Betros, plasma exploding all around them, flying straight towards them. Zelda waited for Odessa to give the signal, but he had better nerves than Zelda gave him credit for, because he waited until they were almost a klick away before yelling, _"MARK!"_

Betros and Bellum immediately banked, crossing paths before splitting in opposite directions. Their Covenant pursuers started to react, but they were just a bit too slow. Dropping his crosshairs over the Seraph, Zelda opened up with everything he had.

"Fox one! Guns, AP!"

Zelda fired a spread of five missiles, then laid into the trigger for his main cannon. Just ahead and slightly above him, Zelda could see Odessa following suit.

The Banshees scattered as the space directly in front of the Seraph lit up with explosions as his APS went to work, but the unexpected nature of the attack meant the Seraph's countermeasures couldn't intercept all the missiles, and his shields quickly lit up as some of the Medusas managed to slip through his defensive screen, sapping them of their strength. Zelda and Odessa's combined cannon fire finally disabled them. Despite this, the Seraph continued to barrel forward, without a care in the world, putting himself in a direct collision course with Zelda.

' _WARNING, COLLISION ALERT!'_

"Shut up!" Zelda snapped at his computer, eyes locked on the incoming Seraph. He noticed while he could have, the Seraph pilot wasn't firing his plasma cannons and instead, was focused on flying straight at Zelda, clearly intent on ramming him. At that point, Zelda knew exactly what he had to do.

" _6, break off! That Seraph will be able to survive that collision, you won't!"_

"Shut up, I know what I'm doing!" Zelda yelled as he maintained his course.

" _Do you_ _ **really**_ _Zelda? Do you!?"_

"Come on you fucker, come on! You want to play? Let's play!" Zelda yelled as the Seraph quickly began filling his windshield.

" _ZELDA!"_

"GAH!" Zelda screamed as the two ships rocketed towards each other.

Mere seconds before impact, Zelda yanked his stick to the right, throwing himself out of the way of the Seraph. But not before arming two missiles and ejecting them right into the Seraph's path. At that distance, the Seraph pilot had absolutely no warning, and slammed right into the Medusas. Zelda could see the two missiles impacting the area where the cockpit would have been located on the Seraph before detonating.

 _ **BOOM!**_

The Seraph erupted into one giant blue fireball.

"Seraph down," Zelda reported as calmly as he could.

" _Fuck! Alright, we'll talk about this later 6, but in the meantime, we still got those Banshees to deal with. Omega-6, you go support Omega-2, I'm going to go cover Leader, copy?"_

"Copy! Omega-6 en route!"

Zelda quickly broke away from Odessa. According to his radar, Betros wasn't too far away, although he still had two Banshees on his tail.

"Omega-2, this is 6," Zelda said. "Betros, I tally two bandits on your tail. I'm coming in to support, hang in there!"

" _6, please hurry up! I can't shake these guys!"_ Betros pleaded, and Zelda could clearly hear the fear in his voice.

"2, are you hit?"

" _What? No, not yet!"_

"Then calm the fuck down," Zelda ordered. "Break contact, head out to open space. If your bird is intact, you should be able to outrun these guys."

" _No, negative! I can't go out to open space, I'm bingo on chaff!"_

"How the fuck are you out already?" Zelda muttered to himself. More loudly, he said, "Shit. Alright, hold on!"

Zipping around a large meteoroid, Zelda finally came within visual contact of Betros. He was flying as fast as he could through the field and while he had managed to avoid getting hit, Zelda knew it was only a matter of time: both Banshees were throwing plasma all over the place like it was going out of style. Plasma bolts and fuel rod cannons were exploding all around Betros, shattering meteoroids and sending fragments in all directions, making the area a bit cluttered to fly through, as well as compromising Zelda's ability to obtain a lock.

"Ah great, we're going to have do this the old fashion way," Zelda told himself.

Putting his Broadsword into a dive, Zelda emerged right behind the two Banshees. Quickly, before the split-lips could react to his presence, Zelda put his crosshairs over the leftmost Banshee.

"Guns, HE!" Zelda barked and pulled the trigger.

The Banshee he was targeting coincidently moved just as Zelda fired, so his first dozen shells missed entirely. Zelda quickly adjusted his aim and his next burst was dead on. The Banshee didn't exploded, it just sort of… fell apart. Dodging the rapidly expanding debris cloud, Zelda placed his crosshairs over the second Banshee and pulled the trigger.

 _BEEP BEEP BEEP._

"What the -"

Zelda glanced at his instrument panel to see what the problem was. "Out of ammo?" he exclaimed. "How the fuck - !?"

" _Zelda, I still got one on my tail!"_

"Fuck!"

Switching back to missiles, Zelda dropped back a little so he wouldn't get damaged by the Medusa's explosion. Then he began searching for a lock, but unfortunately the Banshee pilot was the best one Zelda had seen yet because he began evading and weaving, making it extremely difficult for Zelda to acquire a lock. All the while, the Banshee continued to rain plasma down on Betros.

"Come on you fucker, hold still for like half a second!" Zelda urged.

" _6, where are you!? I can't lose this guy!"_

"Hang on. Hang on Betros! I'm working on it!"

" _WORK FASTER! I'M TAKING HITS!"_ Betros screamed, sounding like he was on the verge of panicking.

"Just hang on for a few more - "

 _ **KABOOM!**_

The Banshee unexpectedly exploded as a missile came out of nowhere from above. Zelda looked up to see a couple of missile Wombats whipping past him in a dive. They were the ones that had taken out the Banshee.

"Fucking… kill stealers!" Zelda yelled after them out of habit though, truth be told, while he would never admit it out loud, he was kind of glad they did that because he was beginning to get worried Betros was going to get taken out before he could kill the Banshee.

Speaking of Betros…

"2, what's your status?"

" _Christ. I think I pissed myself."_

Zelda rolled his eyes. "No Betros, what's the status of your _bird_?"

" _Oh, right. Um… minor damage to the armor, but I think I got hit in the fuel tank by some shrapnel. I'm down to twenty percent reserves."_

"Right."

Zelda zoomed in until he could see Betros' bird. Sure enough, some sort of crystalized cloud was spraying out of a black hole in the underside of his Broadsword. "Omega-Leader, Omega-6. 2 is secured, but he's got a fuel leak. He needs to RTB for repairs."

" _Roger that 6. 2, you have a green light to return to base for repairs. 6, escort him in. 5, you're with me; you're my new wing mate."_

" _Copy."_

" _Copy."_

"Betros, you lead, I'll follow," Zelda ordered. He glanced down at his radar to see where the _Trenchard_ was presently located. "Turning to heading –"

 _ **EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!**_

Zelda didn't think, he just reacted. As soon as he heard his proximity alarm go off, Zelda threw his Broadsword into a barrel roll. Microseconds later, a massive blue plasma bolt passed through the space he was occupying moments ago. As Zelda struggled to recover, he watched in horror as the bolt slam into Betros' Broadsword, ripping his entire left wing off, and throwing him into a spin.

"Holy shit!" Zelda screamed as flames began erupting from the gaping hole where Betros' wing once was. "Omega-6 to Omega-Leader, Betros is hit! I say again, Betros is hit!"

Over the radio, Zelda could hear Betros screaming, _"Mayday mayday mayday! This is Omega-2, I'm hit, I'm hit!"_

"Betros, eject buddy, EJECT!"

" _No good! I can't control it! I'm going in! I'm going in hard! AHHHHHHHHH!"_

Zelda could see Betros drifting away from formation before disappearing behind a meteoroid. He didn't emerge on the other side.

"2, this is 6, do you copy?" Zelda frantically called over the radio. "Omega-6 to any Omega Flight, does anyone tally Omega-2?"

" _6, this is Leader! 2 is gone! You've got contact, high tonnage, closing in on your nine!"_

Zelda glanced over to his left. There, several hundred kilometers away, the two Covenant _CRS-_ class light cruisers that had greeted them when the _Trenchard_ first arrived had finally decided to join the battle, with their mission objective, the crippled destroyer, a few thousand klick behind them. Truth be told, Zelda had kind of forgot about all of them in the chaos, but now the warships were making their presence known by pushing their way through the asteroid field, shooting any UNSC aircraft that got too close. Even as he watched, one of the cruisers blew away an entire flight of Wombats using the same blue plasma bolts that had taken Betros out.

" _Omega-Leader to all UNSC aircraft! Fall back, I say again, fall back!"_

Zelda ignored her. At first, he thought there was something wrong with his Broadsword, as his entire body was trembling. But then the rage hit him. White hot fury began surging through his veins. Betros was a good kid. He was funny, polite, and willing to listen. He had a lot of promise, and Zelda had liked him. But now he was dead –

\- and _someone_ had to pay for that.

Zelda grabbed his control yoke. "Odessa, cover me. I'm going in!"

"' _Going in?' Going in where? Hang on, you're not about to do an attack run on that cruiser, are you? Zelda, fall back! You can't hope to take on a ship that size by yourself!"_

Odessa's words washed over him, and while Zelda's rational side was bobbing his head in agreement as fast as he could, he was getting drowned out by Zelda's emotional side which was screaming 'KILLKILLKILLL!' at the top of his lungs. Almost as if he was on autopilot, Zelda banked and settled in for an attack run on the lead cruiser.

 _"Omega-6, Omega-Leader, what the fuck are you doing? Get your ass back here, NOW!"_

Even if Zelda had been inclined to obey, he knew he couldn't. The moment he decided to attack, he was committed.

The space around him exploded with plasma fire as the Covenant sensors quickly picked up on his approach, but somehow none of them hit. It was like Zelda's hands had suddenly acquired a mind of their own, dodging plasma fire, evading behind asteroids when the fire became too thick, and throwing chaff in all directions to confuse any locks. The rational side of Zelda couldn't help but note this was some of Zelda's best flying ever.

Then suddenly, the barrage abruptly ceased, and Zelda was left with a clear path towards the cruiser's ventral plasma turrets. Up close, the cruiser was an even more impressive sight then it was from afar. The Covenant may have classified these ships as "cruisers," but in truth, they had about as much firepower and armor as the UNSC Navy's light battleships.

Fortunately, Zelda's arsenal included a missile that was capable of penetrating those ships.

Selecting one of his four ASGM-10 anti-ship missiles, Zelda armed it and locked onto his target.

"Fox Three," he announced over the radio, his voice surprisingly calm. Then he pulled the trigger.

The doors to his bomb bay on the underside of his Broadsword popped open for a moment, long enough for the missile to get ejected from its rack. Then the missile's boosters kicked in, and Zelda watched as the missile rocket away. Surprisingly, none of the cruiser's countermeasures activated, and Zelda was able to watch the missile sped towards the plasma turrets -

\- and detonated harmlessly against a blue field of pure energy roughly fifteen meters above the cruiser's hull.

It was at that point Zelda started too calmed down and realized that maybe, _just maybe_ , he had bitten off more than he could chew.

 _"Zelda, get out of there!"_

Zelda looked behind him. The only way he was able to even get this close to the cruiser without getting shot down was because of the numerous asteroids that had surrounded the cruiser, protecting Zelda from view. However, the sheer amount of fire the Covenant had sent his way had destroyed most, if not all those asteroids, leaving the area clear. If Zelda were to try and retreat now, he would simply get swatted out of the sky. But he couldn't advance either: he didn't have nearly enough ordinance to disable the cruiser's shields and without that shield disabled, he wouldn't even be able to so much as scratch the paint on the cruiser. In short, he was fucked.

"Well. That's just great. Whose brilliant fucking idea was this again?" Zelda muttered to himself as he noticed a number of turrets start to swivel in his direction. "Now what?"

 _ **KABOOM!**_

Zelda jerked in surprised as a magnetically accelerated cannon round slammed into the cruiser's shield from above, causing it to light up. Before anyone could react, another four slammed into the shield in quick succession, causing the energy field to fluctuate, before failing entirely.

"What the -" Zelda sputtered, looking up. There, just above the field, were the seven Navy destroyers that had originally accompanied them out here. They were sitting over the field, their bows pointed straight down, unloading on the cruisers.

"Finally!" Zelda exclaimed out loud, pumping his fist in triumph. "Where the fuck were you guys, taking the scenic route?"

He watched as nearly six dozen Archer missiles slam into the shield-less cruiser, which began to fall apart under the barrage. The second cruiser was just beginning to react, rotating around on its axis in order to bring its heaviest weapons to bear, but all the movement did was attract the Navy's attention and shortly, the second cruiser found itself under heavy fire. Meanwhile, an unknown voice sounded over the radio.

 _"Delta Sierra two nine to all call signs: the Navy will deal with these cruisers. All fighters, proceed to the objective and execute the mission."_

In the distance, Zelda could see the crippled Covenant destroyer, desperately limping away but it couldn't go far: a few thousand kilometers beyond the destroyer, Zelda could see a series of green blimps appear on his radar representing the UNSC _Pégoud_ and her escorts. With the _Pégoud_ blocking the way, the destroyer had nowhere to run.

While the destroyer attempted to figure out it's next move, the _Pégoud_ began launching fighters to engage, but Zelda could tell it would take several minutes before they came within range of the destroyer. Meanwhile behind him, the remaining fighters from the _Trenchard_ were in the process of getting reorganized, but it too would take them several minutes before they could begin their attack. Which meant at the current moment, Zelda found himself as the only fighter in position and ready to execute their objective.

 _Hm._

Rationally, Zelda knew he probably should wait for backup. While the destroyer's point defenses had supposedly been disable, the ship's main battery was still operational. And while heavy plasma beams and plasma torpedoes weren't exactly designed to hit something as small as a one-man fighter, it wasn't like they needed to score a direct hit to kill him.

Yet, at the same time, Zelda could still feel the rage burning within him, and he still had three ASGM-10 anti-ship missiles in his arsenal…

Zelda ignited his thrusters and began speeding towards the destroyer.

As he closed the distance, Zelda started studying the destroyer, looking for a weakness, for something that would hopefully amply the damage caused by his ASGMs. He wasn't entirely sure what had damaged the destroyer in the first place, but whatever it was had been powerful as the destroyer was missing its entire left nacelle, leaving a gaping hole in the ship's hull. The entire area was awashed with radiation, scrambling his sensors, but Zelda's targeting computer could faintly pick up a large concentration of energy emitting from one particular spot in breach. Good enough.

"This is for you Betros," Zelda announced out loud to his cockpit as he armed all three of his ASGMs. "Fox three."

He pulled the trigger.

All three missiles quickly crossed the distance between him and ship, and Zelda could see them disappearing into the breach. Even on max zoom, Zelda only barely saw the flash as they detonated. He waited for any more signs his missiles actually did something, but nothing else happened.

Zelda shrugged. Truth be told, he wasn't all that surprised. While he had his hopes, he didn't _really_ think he was going to be able to take down a ship this size with only three missiles. Oh well, he supposed he could let someone else get this kill.

He started to peel away when a series of flashes caught his attention. He turned back to see a number of sympathetic explosions going off on the destroyer's hull. The explosions were starting from the breach and were quickly working their way towards the bow, with each subsequent explosion being more powerful than the last. As Zelda watched, hanging on the edge of his seat, the explosions reached the bow where the Covenant's plasma beam emitter was located.

 _ **KABOOOMM!**_

The bow erupted in a giant flash of light! A visible, spherical shockwave was launched from the explosion and Zelda had but seconds to brace himself before the shockwave hit. His tiny fighter was violently thrown around, and all his systems starting going haywire, but then it was over as quickly as it began.

Zelda hurriedly initiated a system's check, but most of his attention was on the destroyer. The giant fireball had already died down, allowing Zelda to conduct a proper BDA: the front of the destroyer had been completely obliterated, it's armor peeled back like a banana. Individual fires were burning all across the ship's hull with such intensity, even the vacuum of space was unable to immediately extinguish them, and all the run lights as well as the ship's engines had shut down. The ship continued to drift forward at the same speed, but it was clear no one was steering it as the ship began colliding with a number of asteroids that were obviously avoidable.

Yet despite all this, Zelda continued to watch with bated breath, waiting to see what the destroyer would do next, not quite believing his eyes.

 _"Actium Command? This is JTF Omaha,"_ Zelda heard someone report over the radio. _"Mission accomplished, target 1-Alpha is down, I say again, scratch one destroyer, over."_

"YEAHHH!" Zelda cheered, forgetting where he was for the moment and throwing his fist into the air, only to hit them against his canopy. "YEAHH! TAKE THAT YOU SORRY ASSES! HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT! WELCOME TO THE FUCKING AMBRACIAN SYSTEM! WELCOME TO FIST OF HUMANITY! WHAT NOW CUNTS?"

 _"Slipspace rupture detected."_

A shadow fell over him and Zelda looked up to see a huge slipspace portal open up over the entire asteroid field. Emerging from the portal was -

"Holllly shittttt!" Zelda gasped. "Look at the size of that thing!

\- a _**massive**_ Covenant capital ship. The ship had to be at least twice as long as a _CSS_ -class battlecruiser and _bristling_ with just as many weapons.

The ship shot out of the portal at high speeds towards the Navy's destroyers gather there, colliding with two of them, both of which promptly _exploded_ , but the impact didn't even cause the Covenant shields to _fluctuate_. The ship promptly opened up on the remaining destroyers, engaging them with plasma cannons and disabling or crippling another two outright. The last three remaining destroyers disappeared as they made a hasty retreat to slipspace.

But the Covenant warship wasn't done just yet. Advancing on the _Pégoud_ , Zelda could see massive amounts of energy beginning to build on the underside of the Covenant's bulbous bow. The _Pégoud_ fired her thrusters, trying to clear out of the way, but it was too late: there was a blinding light, so bright Zelda's visor automatically polarized, and a pencil-thin line of pure energy lanced out from the ship. The excavator beam cut through asteroids like they were made of butter before spearing the _Pégoud_ amidship. The beam burned its way through the _Pégoud_ and emerged on the other side, cutting the ship in half. Explosions immediately began rippling across the _Pégoud_ 's hull. Then, just when Zelda thought things couldn't get any worse, he saw hundreds, if not thousands, of Banshees and Seraphs emerging from the bowels of the Covenant ship, half of which charged straight at the _Pégoud_ 's fighters, the other half began charging straight at Zelda.

"Oh fuck!" Zelda yelped as he flipped his fighter around and began racing back towards his squadron, but he could tell it was going to be too late. Because of his reckless charge at the destroyer, the Covenant were now closer to him than he was to his squadron. The Covenant would be able to overtake him long before he could reach safety. The only way Zelda might make it was if he left this field and flew at max burn towards the _Trenchard_ , but he would need cover as doing so would leave him exposed to long range Covenant cannon fire.

"Omega-6 to any UNSC call signs in sector one two seven, I've got bandits closing on my six! I need immediate assistance!" Zelda desperately called over radio even though with that many Covenant fighters, it was doubtful _anyone_ would respond. "Anyone copy, over!"

At first, he heard nothing. But then, Zelda noticed a large amount of green blimps appearing on his radar, flying right towards him. He felt his heart flutter. That couldn't be his squadron, could it?

As they drew closer, Zelda realized it wasn't his squadron but in fact, every single Wombat that had been assigned to the _Trenchard_ still left. He wasn't sure if he should feel disappointed or relieved.

 _"Trenchard Control Tower to all Broadswords!"_ Zelda heard over the radio. _"All pilots, fall back to the_ Trenchard _! Wombats will cover your retreat, but you got to get back to the_ Trenchard _ **right now**_ _! We're falling back to Actium and if you're not on board in the next thirty seconds, you_ _ **will**_ _be left behind!"_

Zelda blanched. His Broadsword may have been equipped with all sorts of things, but a slipspace drive was not one of them. Attempting to fly back to Actium under his own power would take him at least thirty years, assuming he had enough fuel to do that (which he didn't) but even then he only had enough oxygen to last him five days, at most.

"Screw it!" Zelda yelled, then threw himself into a climb. Once he was clear of the field, he took off towards the _Trenchard_ , which was thankfully advancing towards him, picking up everyone else.

"They're not going to leave me behind, they're not going to leave me behind," Zelda chanted to himself as he worked on coaxing every ounce of speed from his bird. "They are not going to leave me behind!"

 _"Leader to Omega Flight, sound off as soon you're safe,"_ he heard Bellum demand.

 _"This Omega-12, on board and safe!"_

 _"Omega-3, I made it!"_

 _"This is Omega-8, I'm aboard!"_

As what was left of his squadron continued to sound off, Zelda concentrated on flying as fast he could. As he flew, he was vaguely aware of someone reporting, _"Omega-5, on board,"_ and he felt a faint wave of relief, knowing Odessa had made it.

 _"Omega-Leader, on board. Omega-6, what's your status?"_

"I'm working on it!" Zelda yelled. "I'm maybe fifteen seconds away! Tell those fuckers to keep those damn doors open!"

He glanced at his rear scopes to see how much time he had. The Wombats were dropping at an alarming rate, but they had managed to throw the Covenant formation into disarray, buying everyone a bit more time. He also saw at least a dozen Broadswords behind him, and he realized some of _Pégoud_ 's fighters must have broken through the Covenant lines. With the _Pégoud_ having been destroyed, the _Trenchard_ was the only way they were going to make it home.

The sight of the _Pégoud's_ fighters gave Zelda some hope. "Okay, I got some time," he told himself. "They're not going to leave all of us behind."

With that in mind, Zelda started thinking about how he was going to land his bird. Running some quick mental calculations, Zelda realized he was going too fast and wouldn't be able to slow down in time to do a vertical landing: he was going to have to use the runway.

" _Trenchard_ , this Omega-6," Zelda said over the radio as calmly as he could. "Be advised, my approach is no good; vertical landing is a no go. I say again, vertical landing is a **no go.** Request permission to use the emergency landing strip, over?"

 _"Yeah yeah, fine!"_ came the frantic response. _"The right strip is cleared; just get in here!"_

"Copy! You don't need to tell me twice!"

Zelda angled his bird towards the lit up bay doors at the back of the _Trenchard_. Lowering his landing gear, Zelda shut down his main engines and diverted all power to his forward thrusters to slow down, but even then, when he cross through the doors and into the ship, he was still moving far faster then what would be considered safe.

Dropping his tail hook, Zelda was able to snag one of the arresting cables draped across the floor, but even that wasn't enough to bring him to a stop. His Broadsword barreled down the runway into the overrun area, and Zelda gritted his teeth as his Broadsword began to roll over the arrestor bed. The cable, combined with the arrestor bed, was finally enough to bring him to a stop.

Without even stopping to catch his breath, Zelda quickly raised his tailhook and began working on moving his Broadsword out of the way so the others could land. He looked behind him to see how much time he had, only to see the bay doors closing behind him.

"What - Control Tower, Omega-6, hang on, we still got birds outside!" Zelda yelled over the radio.

 _"Omega-6, we just came within weapon's range of the Covenant. If we don't leave now, we're not leaving at all."_

Even as he heard that, Zelda felt the _Trenchard_ shudder as the ship transitioned into slipspace. He stared in shock at the closed doors. He had a feeling he knew what the answer was going to be, but some part of him had to ask any way.

"Tower," he slowly began, "how many of _Pégoud_ 's fighters did we retrieve?"

Sure enough, Zelda's worst fears were confirmed: _"None."_

Zelda sat back in his seat. There had been over three thousand crewmembers aboard the _Pégoud_ , one hundred and fifty Broadswords, and who knows how many more fighters they had retrieved from Actium before embarking on this mission. Coupled with all the Navy losses, the losses from the _Trenchard_ , and Betros, this day was taking a heavy toll. And to make things worse -

\- Zelda knew it was only the beginning.

 **XXXXX**

 **UNSC** _ **Kilkis**_ **(BB-123), High Orbit, Actium**

 **Spaatz**

Spaatz stared at his screen, his back straight as a ramrod and his hands folded behind his back, as an entire second Covenant invasion fleet drop out of slipspace. Not only did this second force include that _ORS_ -class heavy cruiser that had annihilated JTF Omaha, but it also include **two more** _CCS_ -class battlecruisers, at least a dozen more _CPV_ -class destroyers, and a score of other support ships, bring the number of Covenant warships in the system to forty-seven. In terms of sheer numbers, the UNSC still outnumbered the Covenant a little over two to one not counting the ODPs, but in terms of firepower, the Covenant were now unmatched.

"They were stalling for time, just like we were," Spaatz muttered to himself.

"Pardon me, sir?"

Spaatz glanced over at Kanin. "Never mind. How many ships from JTF Omaha made it back?"

"Thirty gunships and four warships sir: carrier UNSC _Trenchard_ and destroyers _Chi Ceti(1)_ , _Kulish(2)_ , and the _Gabrielle(3)_."

Spaatz nodded in acknowledgement. His forces had managed to destroy three Covenant warships at the cost of eighteen of his own for a kill death ratio of one to three. According to the UNSC manual on space battles, that was about the expected average ratio a command could hope to achieve against the Covenant. So in public, Spaatz would make sure to tell everyone, his men, the civilian press, and the families of those who died, what a great job everyone had done and how the sacrifice of all those men and women was well worth the cost. And that they all died as heroes.

But in private...

...Spaatz knew he was going to spend many sleepless nights, wondering how he could have done things differently, and more importantly, how he could have done things better.

"Kanin, what's the status of our fleet?" he finally asked.

"We are officially at one hundred percent alert status, sir," Kanin reported. "Every single installation and military personnel is now at full alert."

"Good," Spaatz grunted as he watched both Covenant fleets join together, then begin burning their way towards Actium. "Because as of right now, we're done with games. We're done with light skirmishes and picking at each other from afar."

"The Battle of Actium begins, **right now**."

* * *

Ship Names

1\. Chi Ceti: this ship is named after the canon battle, the Chi Ceti Incident (or alternatively, the Battle of Chi Ceti.) The battle first appeared in the novel, _Halo: The Fall of Reach_. It's memorable because the planet of Chi Ceti was where the Spartan IIs including the Master Chief would first receive their Mjolnir powered armor that they would become famous for wearing.

2\. Kulish: the Kulish, which is Sanskrit for thunderbolt, is the name of a mythological weapon belonging to the Vedic deity Indra. The word is also the name for a modern day corvette, the INS _Kulish_ , which is currently in active service with the Indian Navy. I thought the name sounded cool, so I decided to use it. I doubt this ship will be of any major importance for this story.

3\. Gabrielle: in case you guys don't remember, this is the ship that Amber (from chapter 1, 2, & 4) is assigned to. This is not named after any real ship (that I know of.) I do have a backstory for the origins of the name, but I think I'll wait until the ship is the focus of a chapter but I post it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

 **Highway 270, Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0900**

 **Tariq(1)**

 _CLANKCLANKCLANKCLANKCLANKCLANK!_

The sound of nearly fifty armored vehicles traveling at high speeds down a concrete highway filled the air. Like a predator on the prowl, they moved without hesitation, without slowing down, and without regard to any obstacle in their path, and woe be it to any man or beast foolish enough to get in their way.

Leading the column was the tank Lillian and her crew. The front of any convoy was no place for a company first sergeant to be, but unfortunately, due to a fuckup in the formation, that's how things had ended up. Because of that, Noble and Corona were sitting at their stations, concentrating on maneuvering down the road while Tariq sat at his, watching his monitors and gun sights, searching for potential threats.

"Driver, proceed along this route for twelve klicks, then we'll take exit two seven alpha. Exit will be on the left side," Noble ordered over the intercom.

"Exit two seven alpha on the left side, yes First Sergeant," Corona distractedly replied, sounding very much like an automation. Tariq silently snorted to himself.

Turning his attention back to his main optics, Tariq slowly did a three hundred sixty degree turn, looking at what was around them. At this point, the roads and the highways should have been cleared of all civilian traffic; Tariq had heard the governor's announcement, as had everyone else, and he knew all civilians had been ordered to stay put. But because they were civilians, naturally, they didn't listen. Because of that, the entire I-270 highway was full of bumper to bumper civilian traffic, stretching for kilometers in both directions. Now, technically, the city Superintendent should have been able to force them all to go home via the self-driving software that was present in every vehicle. But then again, that was so easy to override, it might as well not be there. Hell, Tariq had done it more times than he could count when he first starting driving.

The thing that kind of baffled Tariq was: where did all these civilians think they were going to go? He knew for a fact no evacuation routes had been established because as of yet, still no one knew what the Covenant intentions were. So what was the point of freaking out and trying to flee the area before the Covenant landed? For all these people knew, the place they were fleeing to would end up being the one place the Covenant landed. And Tariq knew a lot of these civilians had to be fleeing, unless everyone in the general area simultaneously and spontaneously decided to move on the same day.

Tariq mentally shrugged. Oh well. Civilians would be civilians and do civilian things and there wasn't much Tariq could do about that. Just as long as the civilians stayed out of their way.

Of course, with the highway as filled as it was, that wasn't exactly easy, which is why instead of traveling down the main lanes, the entire column was rolling down the break down lane on the edge of the highway instead. In made for a bit of a rougher ride because the lane wasn't as big as the actual travel lane, and plus they were driving through all the snow that been shoveled off the highway. Because of that, the tank was actually tilted to the side, forcing Corona to be extra careful least he accidentally fly off the road.

The real problem was when they approached the on and off ramps to and from the highway, as with traffic being the way it was, often times the tanks found their way blocked by civilian vehicles. Fortunately, most of the time the civilians would move out of the way when they saw a seventy metric ton hunk of metal rolling towards them at a little over seventy kilometers per hour.

Most of the time.

Tariq looked up as he felt Lillian beginning to slow down. Before he could say anything though, he heard Corona announce over the intercom, "There's a car blocking our way."

Tariq glanced at his forward periscopes. They were coming up onto an acceleration merging lane. Dozens of cars were emerging from the entrance ramp, trying to make their way onto the highway, but at the sight of the approaching Grizzly tanks, most of the drivers had pulled to the side to allow them to pass. All except for two: a small blue car and a slick red SUV.

Tariq rotated his gunner's sight around so he could get a closer look as Corona crawled towards them. By the looks of it, the car had rear-ended the SUV, destroying the bumpers on both vehicles but aside from that, there didn't appear to be any other damage. Though, rather than move to the side of the road and deal with it, both cars had opted to remain in the middle of the lane, blocking all traffic. As Tariq watched, the driver of the SUV quickly exited her vehicle, walked over to the car, and knocked on the driver side window. As soon as the window was lowered, the SUV driver began screaming, though, sitting behind almost half a meter worth of composite armor, Tariq couldn't hear what was being said.

"What sort of chickenshit circus is this?" Tariq heard Noble mutter. Over the intercom though, she ordered, "Driver, halt."

Lillian grinded to a halt, allowing Tariq a chance to study the drivers of the two vehicles. The driver of the car was an older lady, with hair that was beginning to turn white and wrinkles that were beginning to form on her face. She had a kindly look to her, reminding Tariq a bit of his grandmother. The driver of the SUV, on the other hand, reminded Tariq of the "can-I-speak-to-your-manager" type of person Tariq used to encounter all the time when he was in high school, doing summer work at the local amusement park. The lady had short, bleach blonde hair with a tannie haircut, oversized sunglasses, and a fake tan. Immediately, Tariq decided he hated her.

"What the fuck," Noble repeated.

"First Sergeant, what should I do?" Corona asked.

Tariq could see Noble looking around, trying to figure out if there was a way to go around. Unfortunately, they were hemmed in, with highway traffic to their left, and a high retaining wall to their right. Noble sighed.

"Hold here gentlemen," she ordered. "Let me see if I can get these idiots to move."

Unbuckling her crash harness, Tariq watched as Noble popped open her hatch, causing him to involuntarily shiver as a gust of freezing air came blowing through the tank. She then stood up so that the upper half of her body was sticking out of the tank.

"HEY!" she yelled, catching the attention of both drivers. "YOU NEED TO GET OUT OF THE WAY! MOVE YOUR VEHICLES TO THE BREAKDOWN LANE SO WE CAN PASS!"

A look of relief passed over the old lady, and Tariq could see her shift her car into gear but before she could go anywhere, the blonde reached into the car and grabbed the steering wheel with one hand. Keeping a grip on the wheel, the blonde lady then turned to Noble and began shouting something, while shaking her head and gesturing widely with her free hand.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Noble incredulously exclaimed. "Gunner, cover me! I'm going to see what their fucking problem is."

Tariq waited until Noble had pulled herself out of the hatch before scooting over and taking her place. He grabbed a hold of the machine gun mounted there and spun it around so it was pointed at the two civilians in case this turned out to be one giant, elaborate trap. In the meantime, Noble had hopped off the side of the tank and was walking towards the two drivers with one hand on the butt of her side arm.

As she walked towards them, Tariq's radio suddenly came to life.

 _"Cataphract 06 Actual to 07. What is the god damn holdup, over?"_

Tariq quickly grabbed his radio. "06? 07. Our way is being blocked by some sort of accident. We're working on sorting it out now, over."

 _"Well, hurry the fuck up,"_ Tariq's commanding officer demanded. _"We need to get to that power station before anything happens, and we can't afford any delays, over."_

Tariq grimaced. Why was everyone always yelling at him?

"Copy that 06," was all he said. "Will relay. 07, out."

Switching over to the intercom system, Tariq started to key his talk button to give Noble a head's up, but before he could say anything, Noble came on the radio.

 _"Yeah, I heard,"_ she reported. _"Keep Lillian running gentlemen: this won't take long."_

Noble fell silent, but the button on her microphone must have gotten stuck because as Noble approached the civilians, Tariq could hear them talk as if he was standing right next to them.

"Finally!" the blonde woman was saying. "This _girl_ here is a terrible driver! She rear-ended me and totaled my car! And I have the video to prove it! I DEMAND that you arrest her!"

"Lady, I don't know where you live where you think traffic law enforcement regularly rides around in an MBT, but I am not the police," Noble retorted. "As such, I don't care who's at fault here. You're both blocking the way. I need both you to move over to the side of the road. You can figure it out there."

The older lady immediately nodded and once again made motions to move her car, but the blonde lady refused to release her wheel.

"No!" the blonde lady snapped. "If you let her drive away, she's going to run away! And somebody has to pay for the damage done to my car!"

"Nobody is going to be running," Noble assured her. "All she's going to do is move to the side of the road, and out of the way. If you could release her wheel ma'am..."

"How dare you!" the lady screeched. "I am not a ma'am!"

Tariq could see Noble physically restraining herself. "Miss," he heard her hiss. "If you could release that woman's steering wheel so she can move out of the way..."

"No one is going anywhere until she gets arrested!" the lady interrupted.

Noble's shoulders immediately tensed, and Tariq found himself involuntarily holding his breath as he waited for the explosion. He didn't have to wait long.

"Lady, as of right now you're interfering with a UNSC military deployment," Noble tersely explained. "You keep this up, it will be YOU that gets arrested. Now, release that steering wheel, **AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY GODDAMN WAY, NOW!"**

The blonde lady jumped and reflexively released her hold on the wheel. The older lady quickly seized the moment to hastily move her car to the side of the road. The blonde lady let out a loud gasp.

"How dare you give me orders," she snapped. "Do you know who I am?"

Noble snorted. "No," she said, before turning around and started heading back to the tank.

"Don't you dare turn your back on me when I'm talking to you soldier!" the lady yelled, chasing after her. "My husband is Colonel Paxton! You disrespect me, you're disrespecting my husband! I will have you thrown into the brig!"

Noble paused. "Are you a military officer?" Tariq heard her neutrally ask.

Tariq could see the lady puff up with pride.

"No, but my husband is a colonel in the Thracian Provincial Army," the lady proudly announced. "As his wife, I speak with his authority!"

"That's not how the military works you dumb cunt," Noble snapped, and Tariq couldn't help but grin. "You're not a military officer, I don't have to listen to a word you say. Now, for the last fucking time: **GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY!"**

The lady gasped. "That's it! I want your name and your rank!"

"First Sergeant Octavia Noble, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 337th Armored Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 53rd Armored Division of the UNSC Army's XIV Armored Corps," Noble snapped. "And make sure you spell my name correctly: it's N-O-B-L-E."

"I'm calling my husband!" the lady yelled. "I'm reporting you!"

"REPORT ALL YOU WANT!" Noble roared back. "JUST DO IT FROM THE SIDE OF THE FUCKING ROAD!"

With that, Noble turned around and headed back to the tank in a huff. Behind her, Tariq could see the blonde lady making a dialing motion, but gave no indication she was going to move her vehicle out of the way.

"Get back to your station Sergeant," Noble barked as she climbed onto the tank and Tariq hastily abandoned his position at the hatch, sliding back into the crew compartment and into his assigned seat. "Driver, move out."

"First Sergeant? The civilian has yet to move her vehicle and doesn't appeared to be doing so anytime soon," Corona reported. "What should I do?"

"Run it over," Noble ordered as she strapped herself in.

There was a pregnant pause.

"...what?" Corona finally said.

"Run the damn car over," Noble repeated. "She's not supposed to be on the road, she's had amble time and warning to get out of the way, and we've already wasted way too much time sitting here. If she's not going to move, then we'll fucking run her over, I'm not even kidding. Driver, forward!"

Tariq could see Corona nervously glance in his direction, but all Tariq could do was offer up a simple shrug. With no other options, Corona began inching the tank forward.

At first, the blonde lady stood in front of the tank with a defiant look on her face. But as Lillian began to pick up speed, that look turned into an expression of shock and the lady quickly dove out of the way.

There was a barely audible screeching of tires as Lillian hit the back of the SUV, shoving it forward for a couple of meters before one of the tracks caught a hold of the SUV's frame. Lillian immediately started to mount the vehicle, and the SUV quickly crumpled under her immense weight, causing the tires to burst and all the windows to explode outwards. Inside the tank, there wasn't even a bump as Lillian completely rolled over the SUV, leaving nothing but a thin pancake of plastic metal and laying in the middle of the road.

As Lillian continued down the road, Tariq rotated his gunner's sight around, morbidly curious to see what the woman's reaction was. By the looks of it, the lady almost appeared to have gone into shock as all she did was stand there at the side of the road, gaping, as the rest of the tanks in the convoy proceeded to roll over whatever was left of her car.

"Focus up gentlemen," Noble snapped, causing Tariq to jump. "I realize some of you might not feel comfortable with what just happened, but trust me when I say it was absolutely necessary. We're running behind schedule and we can't afford any more delays. She made her choice, and now she has to deal with the consequences. And that goes for anyone else who gets in our way. Our military deployment is priority number one and supersedes any and all other concerns. Understood?"

"Yes First Sergeant," Tariq heard Corona murmur in affirmation, but Tariq could see enough of his face to note how uncomfortable he looked.

Tariq mentally shrugged. For his part, he wasn't sure how he felt about the situation. On one hand, in a Winter Contingency situation, military needs _were_ to be prioritized over civilian matters. That just made for good tactical sense. However on the other hand, Tariq had seen firsthand what happened when that practice was taken too far.

He involuntarily shivered. He could only hope it didn't go that far.

His tactical display suddenly let out a loud _CHIRP_ , indicating it was getting updated with information from higher up the chain of command. Grateful for a distraction, Tariq seized it and immediately began studying it, trying to figure out what sort of new intel they had just received. It took him a few moments to spot the change.

"List of official evacuation routes and zones for civilians," Tariq read out loud to himself. "What… the…? Ah shit… First Sergeant?"

"What is it Sergeant Helmand?"

"Have you seen this yet Top?" Tariq asked, flashing his tactical display to her.

"No," Noble replied, shaking her head before reaching out and grabbing her own display. "What's up?"

"We just got new intel from brigade headquarters. Looks like Command has established evacuation routes and evacuation zones for civilians. In this area…"

"What, already?" Noble exclaimed as she studied the data herself. "Wow. So much for government inefficiency. They worked a lot faster than I would have thought. Good for them I guess. With any luck, all this traffic will clear out soon."

Tariq held his breath as he waited for the other shoe to drop for Noble. Fortunately, he didn't have to wait long as almost immediately, Noble's head snapped up and she frowned.

"Wait a minute," she began, "how can Command be establishing evacuation zones for this area when we don't even know where the Covenant are going to fucking lan-"

Noble's voice abruptly cut off as realization struck her, and she and Tariq shared a look before almost as one, they both glanced skyward. Tariq proceeded to very succinctly sum up both their feelings.

"Ah fuck."

Tariq glanced over at Noble in time to see her nervously swallowing.

"Driver," she called out.

"Yes First Sergeant?" Corona replied.

"Floor it," she bluntly ordered.

"This entire battalion needs to be at that power generator _**right fucking now."**_

 **XXXXX**

 **Highway 495, Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0930**

 **Marcus**

Marcus absentmindedly drummed his fingers against the steering wheel as he waited for the HEMTT in front of him to move.

"Lots of traffic today, huh?" Dresden commented from the passenger seat beside him. "Wonder where everyone thinks they're going?"

Given that this was the first time Marcus had driven on these roads, he wasn't sure if this amount of traffic was out of place or not for this time, so all he did was shrug in acknowledgement.

The HEMTT in front of him suddenly moved, drawing Marcus' attention, thus distracting him from Dresden's next words.

"What was that sir?" Marcus asked as he found himself at a standstill once again.

"I said, 'you seem a lot calmer now,'" Dresden repeated.

Marcus thought about it for a moment before realizing he did feel a bit more relaxed.

"I guess I am," he sheepishly admitted. "I don't really know why. I guess there's something calming about sitting behind this wheel."

"It's probably because it's normal to you," Dresden noted. "Running around, getting weapons and preparing for a fight? I'm guessing you don't do that every day. At least, I don't hope you don't. But sitting in traffic? That's probably more of a typical Tuesday morning for you, huh?"

Marcus considered what Dresden had just said and realized what he was saying was true. He had started taking college classes in his senior year of high school and as such, had been driving himself to his local university every other day. While this... monster truck, he was currently sitting in was significantly larger than his mother's little green hatchback, this traffic jam they were stuck in wasn't all that different from the ones back home.

This, this Marcus could deal with. The Covenant on the other hand? The mere thought of them was almost enough to cause Marcus to break out in a cold sweat.

"Yep," Dresden was saying. "Us humans are creatures of habit. We love our routines. Which is why warfare is so difficult for most people; I've personally been involved in over half a dozen firefights and each and every single of them were distinctively different from each other."

Marcus found he didn't really know what to say to that, though he did find comfort in the fact that Dresden had been in a firefight before. He had figured Dresden for a war veteran, though Marcus hadn't been sure as he was hardly an expert on those sort of matters. The confirmation was enough to cheer Marcus up considerably though, as he'd been worried he was about to be led into a war by someone who knew just as much as he did. Marcus briefly wondered if any of those six battles had been against the Covenant and turned to ask, but unfortunately at that point, Dresden had already turned his attention to Orlović.

Orlović was sitting in the turret ring in the middle of the cab, with only the lower half of his body actually inside. Dresden slapped Orlović hard against his leg, cheerfully calling out, "You alright out there Billy-O?"

Orlović's right arm snaked into the cab and he thrust his middle finger in Dresden's direction. Dresden let out a bark of laughter.

"CAN WE HURRY THIS UP?" Orlović yelled to be hear over the rumble of the HEMTT's engine. "I'VE GOT ICICLES GROWING OUT FROM MY FUCKING NOSE!"

Dresden cocked his head.

"Then what are you still doing sitting out there, numbnuts? Come inside!" he yelled back.

"I THOUGHT WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE MANNING THE GUNS?"

"You see the Covenant anywhere?"

Marcus reflexively looked around. Aside from a whole ton of cars, there wasn't anything particularly alien looking.

"NAH MAN, WE GOOD OUT HERE!"

"Then get your dumb ass in here!" Dresden yelled back, sounding amused. "Until the Covies touchdown, we'll be fine if we leave the gun unmanned! Just put the weapon in condition one and lock it in place!"

Marcus could hear Orlović scrambling around on the roof. As Orlović worked, Dresden glanced in Marcus' direction.

"Your rifle is in condition one, right?"

"Um… I don't know what that means sir," Marcus admitted.

"Is there a loaded magazine in place, a round in the chamber, and is the selector switch set on safe?"

Marcus hastily glanced at his assigned rifle, which was sitting in its designated spot in the driver side door.

"Yes…" Marcus hesitantly replied. "I think so?"

"Good" Dresden grunted, scooting to the side as much as possible as Orlović slid off his harness and forced himself into the small space between Marcus and Dresden. "From this point forward, make sure it always stays that way."

"Yes sir," Marcus mumbled as Orlović settled in on the bench.

"Fuck!" Orlović yelped. "Why the fuck is it so goddamn cold out there?"

Dresden glanced at him with an amused look on his face. "Well, you see Private Orlović, because Actium is constantly spinning around on its axis, at least once a year the northern hemisphere finds itself orientated away from Ambracia's light, resulting in shorter days and colder temperatures. In the local vernacular, we refer to this period as 'winter'."

"Fuck off Professor Smart-ass," Orlović snapped as Marcus couldn't help but share a grin with Dresden. "You know what I mean. Fucking... always giving me a smart-ass answer to a simple fucking question," he grumbled as he frantically rubbed his hands together. "Man. These fucking gloves suck! My hands are like ice bro!"

"Told you, the standard Army issues equipment is pretty crappy," Dresden noted. "Should have gone out and bought a pair of your own when you had the chance."

"Yeah, well, I'm not loaded like you are," Orlović retorted. "Fuck. Why isn't the fucking heater working?"

"It crapped out on us last night," Dresden replied with a shrug.

"What, again? I thought the fucking grease monkeys just fixed the damn thing?"

"Yeah, they did, but the generator is so worn out, no amount of tinkering is ever going to make it work properly again. I mean, that's what happens when you hand-me-downs from the big green Army."

"Fuck," Orlović grumbled again. "We need a fire. Can we set a fire?"

"Sure," Dresden replied. "I could go for a fire. What about you Marcus? You think you could go for a fire? Hey, I got some rags in the back we could burn. Who's got a lighter?"

Marcus stared at them as Orlović enthusiastically pulled out a small Zippo lighter. "Um... Sergeant? Is that wise? Trying to have a fire in here?"

Dresden glanced at him. "Sure. Why wouldn't it be?"

In response, Marcus jerked his thumb towards the rear of the Rig. Sitting on a trailer right behind them were four, massive, Army anti-air, anti-ship, and anti-ballistic missiles that they had picked up from an armory not even thirty minutes ago.

Dresden glanced in the direction Marcus was pointing, and did a quick double take as if he was just noticing the missiles for the first time. "Huh. Well, what about them?" he innocently asked.

Marcus stared at him, incredulous. "Well, I'm no expert," he began, "but somehow I don't think 'missiles' and 'fire' mix very well."

Orlović immediately shook his head

"Nah, don't worry about them bro. It'll take a lot more than a little fire to damage them. Come on Theo, let's do this, I'm freezing."

He raised the lighter but before he could ignite it, Dresden grabbed his hand.

"Hang on," Dresden said. "Marcus here might have a point."

"Does he though?" Orlović skeptically retorted. "I mean, you do know it would take like, I dunno, another missile for these missiles to go off, right?"

"Yeah, but the heat from our fire might screw up the seeker components in the warhead," Dresden pointed out with a shrug. "Plus, it's not like we've really got a safe container to hold the fire. If it gets out of control, we might blow ourselves up and if that happens, I think Olsen here might get a little bit upset with us," he finished with a grin directed towards Marcus.

Marcus resisted the urge to snort. "A little upset" was putting it lightly. He didn't want to die, but he especially didn't want to die because some idiot accidentally set him on fire.

"Fine," Orlović reluctantly said, putting away his lighter. He shot Marcus a nasty glare. "Spoilsport."

Marcus rolled his eyes, but fortunately Orlović was too busy bitching to notice.

"Fuck it's cold!" he yelled before turning to Dresden. "How the fuck are you not cold dude?"

Dresden, who Marcus noticed for the first time was wearing nothing but a set of armor over his standard issued jacket, shrugged.

"You do remember I was born and raised near the South Pole, right?" he noted. "Temperatures down there are regularly in the negatives. This? This is like summertime for us."

"Really?" Marcus exclaimed, aghast. "How can you stand to live like that?"

Dresden shrugged. "It's really not so bad once you get used to it," he tried to convince them. "Really, the worst part is the wind. The region I'm from, Skänska, is a cold desert so everything is really flat and open. Wind doesn't blow very fast, especially compared to here, but unlike this area, there are no windbreaks: no trees or crap like that. In fact," he said with a laugh, "I didn't see a real life tree until I was thirteen."

Marcus shook his head in disbelieve. His hometown of Astoria was in the temperate zone, so he was used to having four seasons in a year. He couldn't imagine what it would be like any other way. "Why would you want to live in a place like that?"

"Well, for us, it was because my mom's a biologist and apparently there was some very unusual moss growth in that region," Dresden explained. "But other people were living there because the South Pole has the largest deposit of platinum in the world. So, mining is a very big industry down there."

Orlović shook his head. "Fucking freaks of nature man," he groaned. "God. Wish I was back home. Cyprium; if there was ever a paradise, that would be it man."

Marcus' head snapped up. "You're from Cyprium?" he excitedly asked.

"Well, okay… technically no, it's where my grandparents live, but since me and my sibs have been getting shipped there every winter since I was like, five, it's kind of like my second home."

"Huh," Marcus commented. "You know, I was thinking about going to uni there."

"Yeah? Which one?"

"Caedmon University."

"Dude, what up! Bulldogs, represent yo!" Orlović excitedly lifted his arm for a high five, one that Marcus enthusiastically returned. "My grandpappy's the dean of one of the colleges there."

"Yeah? Which college?"

"The College of Visual and Performing Arts."

"No kidding! That's the college I was going to apply for. Only, I got sent here," Marcus lamely added.

"It's all good," Orlović assured him. "But dude, that is fucking crazy man!"

"Aww," Dresden suddenly cooed from the passenger seat. "Look at you two. Getting all _cozy_ and making new _friends…_ "

"Hey man, don't be jealous cause us normal people got a connection that you don't," Orlović brightly retorted.

"No, I'm being serious; it's great to you youngins making friends. That's what the Army is all about: bring a couple of people together so they can go out and kill the third person," Dresden said with just the barest hint of sarcasm. He leaned forward as he suddenly glanced out of the window. "Hey Marcus? Just be aware that we should be taking this next exit."

"Roger that sir," Marcus said, readopting his professional attitude as he felt the moment of levity pass.

"Yeah, that's our exit, as long as the LT hasn't fucked up the directions," Orlović grumbled before pausing. "Hey: where are we going anyway?"

Dresden shot him a glance. "Tell me Billy: do you just have a really shitty memory or do you just not bother listening during the brief?"

"Now why would I bother listening when I know you will?" Orlović unabashedly admitted.

Dresden sighed. "Why do I bother asking," he muttered. More loudly, he said, "Okay, we're going north, towards the city of Byzas. The Big Army has got… you know what? It'll just be easier if I just showed you."

Grabbing a data pad from the dashboard, Dresden called up a map of the area. "Okay, so here's where we're… huh. Our orders have changed. When did that happen?"

He trailed off and after a few moments of dead silence, Marcus and Orlović exchanged a look.

"Hey Sarge. Something wrong?" Orlović finally asked.

Dresden shook his head. "Not necessarily. It's just; we were originally supposed to go further into the city, but now we're headed to the Forseti National Airport just south of the city outskirts. No big deal. But the thing is, that airport is already being designated as an evacuation zone."

"What does that mean?" Marcus asked.

"Pretty much what it sounds like: it's a zone where civilians will go to get evacuated offworld. The things is, the military doesn't like to establish evacuation zones until they have a pretty good idea of where the Covenant are going to land, mainly because they don't want civilians flooding the roads and blocking the streets like they're doing now." Dresden gestured out the window. "The fact that they've gone ahead and marked an evac zone is… problematic."

"What does that mean for us sir?" Marcus asked, his fear from earlier this morning quickly returning.

Dresden gave him a blank look. "For us? It could mean anything. But for now?" He turned to Orlović.

"I think that means you better get back on that gun."

 **XXXXX**

 **Byzas, Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0942**

 **Selene**

Selene dropped the delineator post onto the ground before tossing the rubber base around it to make sure it didn't move. Shoving it into place, she tapped a button at the top, activating the holographic police barrier. Waving her hand through the image to make sure it was stable, she took a few steps back to check her work. Given that the barrier was just light, it couldn't physically stop anyone from passing through, but the image alone was usually enough to deter the vast majority of people from trying to cross. Satisfied the road was, for the most part, blocked off, Selene started walking back to the area where Kingsley had parked their SUV.

On the military's command, the BPD had been ordered to close off and keep clear of all civilian traffic five blocks of the street Selene was currently walking on. At first mystified as to why this particular street needed to be close, the reasoning behind their orders became abundantly clear the moment they had arrived: the military had installed three massive machines in the middle of the street. The machines were about nine meters tall and each of them was topped off with a _massive_ machine gun. Upon arrival, Shin had immediately identified them as an anti-aircraft battery assigned to the local Provincial Militia. Not being a soldier herself, Selene was forced to take his word for it. At any case, Selene could understand exactly why the military wanted to keep civilians away from them as they looked very complex, and very dangerous.

She rounded the corner and walked back to the SUV, where at the moment, Kingsley and Shin were busy putting on the rest of their protective gear.

"What's the NIJ rating on this stuff anyways?" she heard Shin asked as he finished securing a borrowed vest over his torso. He patted the police label Velcroed to the center of his chest for emphasis.

"What you've got on there is rated level IIIA," Kingsley reported.

Shin looked up sharply at that. "You're kidding, right?" he asked, sounding astonished. "This thing can only protect against handgun fire?"

"Yes? That's generally what level IIIA vest are rated for, are they not?" Kingsley queried.

"What about shrapnel? How good is it against shrapnel?"

Selene watched as Kingsley tapped his chin while he considered the answer.

"Well," he finally said, "I guess it depends on the type of shrapnel. If the shrapnel is blunt and not moving at speeds any faster than what your average cricket bowler can achieve with a ball, then you'll be fine I suppose." Kingsley looked up and grinned at the expression on Shin's face. "Something wrong?"

"Why…" Shin slowly began, "are we wearing ballistic vests that aren't capable of stopping rifle rounds and shrapnel?"

"Because these aren't ballistic vests? This is in fact, riot gear?" Selene suggested as she walked up. Shin slowly turned towards her with a puzzled look on his face.

"Riot gear, huh?" he noted. "And why are you guys only equipped with riot gear again?"

Selene and Kingsley exchanged an amused look. "Because we're police officers," Selene explained with a laugh. "Not soldiers. We were never really expected to go up against machine guns or the like."

Shin seemed to think about it before shrugging. "Guess that makes sense."

"Not quite what you're used to I take it?" Kingsley suggested. Shin shook his head.

"No, not really."

"Hey: you're the one who wanted to help us," Selene reminded him. "You regretting that decision now?"

Shin grinned. "Na. I just need a couple minutes to get use to all this equipment. I remember on my first tour, when the Covenant showed up, I ended up having to fight with a bunch of former Innies. Had to get used to their tactics and equipment. Now _that_ was weird. _Thi_ _s_ is no biggie."

Selene nodded in understanding as she bent over to strap on her leg guards. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Kingsley looking up in interesting.

"So, you've see action against the Covenant, have you?" she heard him asked Shin. She glanced over her shoulder, interested in the answer.

Shin nodded. "Yep. Back in '42, I got posted to Fallow, the moon orbiting over the colony of Alluvion, about two months before the Covies showed up. I was one of the fortunate ones to get off that place before it got glassed. Which was fine, just ended up shifting over to Alluvion and continuing the fight there. Second time was back in '44, on Miridem. God, now that was a shithole. Then at the beginning of this year, I was over at Draco III, but my ship was in a support role and I never made it to the surface before we withdrew, so I don't think that counts. What 'bout you guys?"

Both Selene and Kingsley shook their heads.

"Selene here has never served in the armed forces, whereas my only exposure to the military was a three year stint with the Actium Army. I was a 'financial management technician,'" Kingsley said, sounding somewhat embarrassed. "Of course, this was about twenty years ago, before the Covenant was even a thing. Never got deployed, never saw any action, and _definitely_ never fired a shot in anger."

Shin shrugged. "Hey man, nothing wrong with that. Military ain't for everybody. Plus, you two are here holding down the home front. That's got to be respected."

"That's not what you were saying last night when I was arresting you," Selene pointed out before she could stop herself.

Shin stared at her with a blank look on his face for a few moments, before embarrassment began coloring his cheeks. "Ah shit. I did say something like that, didn't I? Fuck, I must have been more shitfaced than I thought if I was saying shit like that. God… Look, Officer Riddle, all I can say I am very sorry for my behavior last night and that I _hope_ I will have the chance to make it up to you at some point in the future."

Upon seeing how apologetic Shin looked, Selene immediately felt guilty for bringing it up. "That's alright," Selene quickly said. "It's not really that big of a deal; in fact, I probably shouldn't have brought it up."

"Hey guys? Sorry to interrupt," Kingsley suddenly said. He held up his radio. "Military is telling me we forgot to block off one of the streets at the other end. We're out of barricades, so I'm just going to take the truck down there and block off the road."

"You want us to come with LT?" Selene immediately asked.

"No. The intersection on this end looked a lot busier than the other one, so I suspect we're going to see a lot of people trying to come down this way. I want you two to stay here and make sure they don't," Kinsley ordered.

Selene nodded in acknowledgement and climbed off the SUV, grabbing her arm guards as she did. Shin followed her as she moved to the sidewalk so she wasn't blocking the road and as she did, she suddenly noticed he wasn't wearing any of the arm or leg guards provided to him, only the vest.

"Not wearing the extra armor?"

Shin frowned. "No. What's the point if they can't protect me against shrapnel and what have you? At that point, they're just going to affect my mobility. I rather go light and take my chances."

Selene glanced at Kingsley, who gave his nod of approval.

"Well, that's technically against department policy, but then again, you're also not a cop so I guess you can wear whatever you'd like," Selene finally said.

"Exactly," Kingsley said in agreement. "Oh, and before we forget, don't forget to get your weapons guys."

Walking over to the trunk, he popped it open and pulled out a large black duffle bag. He tossed it to the ground and unzipped it. Shin's eyes immediately lit up as he reached into the bag and pulled out a weapon.

"Holy shit. Is this an M319 grenade launcher?" he exclaimed, examining the weapon. "I didn't think you guys had that sort of firepower in your inventory."

"We don't. That's a tear gas dispenser," Selene informed him and watched as he immediately returned the weapon to the bag. "We're cops, remember? Not soldiers. Less-than-lethal weapons are all we have."

To emphasis the point, Selene reached into the bag and pulled out a shotgun, with its stock and fore end painted bright orange to indicate its less-than-lethal status. Pulling out a box of bean-bag rounds, she quickly loaded it, cycling the action with a satisfying _klikt._

"Well, that's disappointing," she heard Shin mutter. "Well, hang on a second. If that's the case, how come he's got a DMR?" he pointed at Kingsley.

"It's not really one. It looks like it, but this thing has been configured to only fire rubber bullets," Kingsley informed him as he lift the rifle to show him the blue colored handguards.

"Huh."

"Anyways, you guys good?" Kingsley asked, glancing at Selene. She quickly gave him a thumbs up. "Alright. I'll be back."

Throwing the SUV into gear, he quickly drove off down the street.

"Man, this sucks," Shin complained. "Give me an MA37 or an M7 or something. Jesus."

"The only people on the force who have lethal weapons are the SWAT teams," Selene explained as she strapped on her helmet. "That's not just department policy, that provincial law right there."

"No shit? How'd you get that then?"

She glanced over, only to see Shin eyeballing her personal sidearm. "Oh this? This is my off duty piece. You would not believe the amount of paperwork I had to fill out in order to get this thing."

"That's a Caveria PX40, isn't it? Compact model by the looks of it. Mind if I take a closer look?"

Selene considered the request and decided there was no harm. Pulling it out, she ejected the magazine and cleared the chamber before handing it over. Shin took it, and immediately brought the pistol up to his sightline.

"Hm. Not bad. Sturdy yet, lightweight at the same time. Good sights. Striker fired, I see," he commented.

"You seem pretty familiar with it. You use that in the military?"

"No," he immediately said. "Thank god. I hate 10mm."

"Why's that? It's a reliable round."

"I think the military has spoiled me. Anything less than a 12.7mm pistol round feels like a BB gun to me," Shin sheepishly admitted. "Plus, it's not very effective against Covenant armor. Something you might want to keep in mind if it comes to that."

"So," he began as he handed her handgun back to her. "We're essentially manning a roadblock, huh? Let me ask you something Officer Riddle: how does the police stop people from running roadblocks?"

"Well, there's a variety of ways," Selene began. "Around here, we've got the benefit of having the city Superintendent. As long as the vehicle is on self-driving mode and we've properly mapped out our roadblocks, the city Superintendent will reroute most of the vehicles we encounter. If that doesn't work, we usually have some flashing signs indicating they're headed towards a police barricade. Most people around here are conditioned to pay attention to flashing lights, especially police blue ones so…"

Selene reached out to the delineator post and hit a button. Immediately the holographic barricade lit up in a blue flashing light.

"Worse comes to worse," Selene continued as she switched the lights off. "We'll lay out a tire deflation device, which is essentially a spike strip. Generally don't need to do more than that; people know if they run through these stops, they either face a pretty serious fine or get arrested." She trailed off and glanced over at Shin. "How does the military stop a car?"

"You know, that's an interesting question. I'll tell you though, on my first tour when we were running counterinsurgency operations, me and my buddies found the most effective way to stop a car was just to shoot the driver," Shin casually announced. "I'd say that worked about ninety-nine percent of the time."

Selene's head snapped towards him, and she stared at him, aghast. That is, until Shin broke out in a grin.

"I'm just fucking with you," he told her with a laugh. "Sorry. I got a weird sense of humor. No, we have something known as the 'EOF' or 'Escalation of Force' procedure. Most of it was a bunch of bull because we usually ended up having to put an EMP grenade through the engine block. Shut down the vehicle completely."

Selene let out a mute sigh of relief. Not that she though the destruction of private property was good, but at least it was far better than soldiers outright murdering people. A thought suddenly occurred to her.

"I thought you said your first tour was you fighting against the Covenant, not the Insurgency?"

"It was both. It started off as a COIN operation, but when the Covenant showed up, all parties involved ended up banding together to fight them. Including the Insurgents, if you can believe that."

"Really? So, you were fighting alongside Innies? That happen often?"

Shin shrugged. "Generally not. But, I mean, when the Covenant show up, all bets are off."

"I've never met an Innie before," Selene confessed. "I've met some kids who wanted to be Innies, but I've never met like an actual Innie before. If you don't mind me asking, what are they like? They as bad as the media makes them out to be?"

"You know, there was actually this one Innie chick I met," Shin said thoughtfully. "She was actually a POW of ours before she was released as part of the terms of the ceasefire. Ended up getting assigned to the same squad together. First time I met her, she was a fucking fanatic. Actually, I'm pretty sure she was about ready to shoot me in the back less than five minutes after we met. But after she got punched in the fucking chest by an Elite, she started to mellow out and she turned out to be not so bad. She was funny in a sarcastic way. Hell of a fighter. Only person I ever met who could make an IED out of a MRE bag, it was fucking wild. In an alternative universe, we probably could have been pretty good friends." Shin shrugged. "But she chose the wrong side."

"What happened to her?" Selene asked.

Shin shrugged again. "We both got injured in the same mortar strike. Ended up getting evacuated offworld and shipped off to Reach for medical treatment. About halfway there, word came down the pipeline that we had lost the battle, and Alluvion was gone. With no planet left to defend, High Command suddenly decided didn't need the Innies anymore so as soon as we touched down, she got snatched up and arrested by ONI for treason. Heard through the grapevine she got released about, what, six months ago? And joined, of all the fucking things, the UNSC Army. Specifically the Airborne, I think. I don't know for sure, haven't talked to her or seen her since."

"You ever think about trying to reach out to her?" Selene couldn't help but probe.

Shin snorted. "Why would I? All she ever was, was a means to an end."

Selene was completely thrown by the callousness of that statement. Maybe she had been reading too much into it, but from the way Shin had described her, Selene had definitely gotten the feeling there had been some personal connection between the two. Selene was about to probe a bit more, when an alarm abruptly went off behind her.

"What the heck is that?" she exclaimed, startled. She glanced over her shoulder and to her alarm, the soldiers on the street were starting to freak out; running around and screaming orders. One of the soldiers ran up the closest machine on the street and began typing something into a control panel, and the machine gun mounted on top of the tower quickly came to life, spinning around and pointing upwards.

"What's going on?" she asked Shin, only to turn around and see a rather stony expression had appeared on his face.

"Get inside," he barked.

"What?"

"Find cover, NOW!" he yelled before sprinting towards the nearest building.

Alarmed, and more than a little bit scared, Selene took off after him. Behind her, she could hear an announcement being broadcasted.

" _ATTENTION ALL UNITS, WE ARE AT RED CON ZERO! ENEMY AIRCRAFT INBOUND! I SAY AGAIN!"_

" _ **INCOMING BANDITS!"**_

* * *

1\. This is something I should have mentioned in chapter 1, but I forgot. Tariq's armored battalion is based off the US Army's way of organizing their Combined Arms Battalions for their armored units. Which means, the organization is as follows:

A tank platoon consist of four tanks

A tank company consist of three tank platoons (12 tanks) plus another two for the company commander and executive officer (for a total of 14 tanks per company)

A combined arms battalion consist of a headquarters company (with two tanks for the CO & XO,) two companies of tanks, and one mechanized infantry company (which has the same amount of vehicles as a tank company, only with IFVs and not MBTs.)

Notice how a company first sergeant does **NOT** have a tank assigned to them. Obviously, in this story, First Sergeant Noble **IS** riding around in the tank. Why? Because… I wanted it to be that way. Simple as that.

I just wanted to note that what's being depicted in this story is not quite accurate to the TO&E for combined arms battalions of the US Army, and I realize that. It might be accurate for other armies, but I can't say for certain. (And in case anyone is wondering, the first sergeant would normally be riding in an APC, probably some sort of M113 variant in the US Army.)


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

 **UNSC** _ **Kilkis**_ **(BB-123), High Orbit, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0922**

 **Spaatz**

"Captain Yirenkyi! The UNSC _Excalibur_ is under heavy fire and requesting immediate aid!"

"Helm, bring us about, all engines ahead, flank! Put us between the _Excalibur_ and those ships! Weaps, lock onto target 9-Bravo and 5-Charlie with all batteries and fire at will! Try and force them to move! Comms, inform the _Salamis_ of our actions and have them move in to cover the hole in the formation we're going to be leaving behind!"

"Aye sir!"

"Ops, status of the _Excalibur_!"

"She taking heavy fire sir! I'm reading multiple breaches across her hull and she's leaking atmosphere! Her MAC is offline and she's expended all chaff!"

"Helm, time to intercept!"

"Two minutes sir!"

"The _Excalibur_ doesn't have two minutes! We need to go faster! Officer of the Deck, push reactors to one hundred and ten percent!"

"Reactors to one hundred and ten percent, aye sir!"

"Helm, status?"

"Time to intercept: one minute sir!"

"Sir, we - VAMPIRE VAMPIRE VAMPIRE! Sir, I'm tracking three plasma torpedoes bearing four eight seven, all headed towards the _Excalibur_! Time to target, **thirty** **seconds**!"

"Officer of the Deck, reactor to a hundred and fifteen percent! Weaps, launch all chaff forward of our bow and lock on to those vamps with missile pods Alpha through Echo! If those vampires don't go for those decoys, try and kill with bird!"

"Aye sir! Chaff away! Standby... sir, no joy with the decoys, attempting to kill vamps with birds! Birds away... no joy! I say again, **no joy** with birds!"

"Officer of the Deck, reactor to one hundred and fifty percent! All hands, BRACE FOR IMPACT PORT SIDE!"

Spaatz nervously gripped his crash restraints as the _Kilkis_ suddenly launched forward, racing ahead to put herself between the crippled _Excalibur_ and her tormentors. For a few moments, there was no noise but the beeping and chiming of the consoles as the entire bridge crew readied themselves. Then -

 _ **BOOMBOOM BOOMBOOM**_

A series of explosions echoed through the entire ship and the _Kilkis_ violently shook as she was struck in her port side by a series of projectiles. At once a high pitch alarm began to sound.

"Ops, give me status on the _Excalibur_!" Yirenkyi demanded. "Did we get the vamps? Were we able to intercept all three?"

"Scanning now sir, standby! Standby... reports coming in now! Sir, according to my scans, we were able to intercept two vamps but um… shit… but one got through sir…"

"Give me a status update on the _Excalibur_!"

The operations officer was silent.

"God dammit Lieutenant!" Yirenkyi snapped. "What is the status of the _Excalibur_!?"

"...she's gone sir. I've lost her IFF tags and there's just a cloud of debris sit… sitting where she was."

From where he was stationed, Spaatz could see a range of emotions pass over Yirenkyi's face. Shock, horror, sorrow, and rage all flashed across his face in an instant before it finally settling on grief, and he lowered his head. But ever the professional, it didn't take long for Yirenkyi to bury whatever emotions he was feeling at the moment and when he raised his head back up, his mask of cold professionalism was back in place, though Spaatz could still see the sadness shining in his eyes.

"Officer of the Deck, deploy the search and rescue Pelicans," Yirenkyi ordered. "Have them… have them sweep for survivors. Let's see if anyone made it to the escape pods before the end. In the meantime, focus up ladies and gentlemen! We still have a battle to fight, and a civilian yacht to protect. Ops! Give me a sitrep!"

The operations officer shook his head. "Um, sounding and security reporting in now sir. Armor on the port side is scrapped but we're not reading any breaches in the hull. All weapons are green, however the reactor is approaching critical levels."

"Officer of the Deck, drop reactors down to eighty percent until heat levels have reached nominal levels then bring us back to full power. Helm, check ninety degrees port and get us back into this fight. Weaps, find me something to kill!"

"Aye sir! Um… sir, the _Lemnos_ is requesting our aid with target 12-Bravo!"

"Well then, let's give it to them! Helm, check fifteen degrees starboard, all engines ahead, full! Weaps, load up a solid core shell into MAC's one and three and get me a firing solution on target 12-Bravo! Coordinate with the _Lemnos'_ fire controller so all rounds hit simultaneously, then fire when ready!"

"Aye sir! Acquiring firing solution… target locked… rounds away sir!"

Through his tac display, Spaatz watched as two, fifteen hundred metric ton depleted uranium shells were launched from their barrels at nearly thirty-five thousand kilometers per second and quickly cross the distance to the Covenant corvette in question. At the same time, nearly two hundred Archer anti-ship missiles departed from their tubes deep within the _Lemnos_ and sped towards the same target.

The MAC shells reached the target first, smashing into the corvette's shields with enough force to disable them outright. Her weapons and active protective systems were still operational though, and her pulse laser turrets quickly went to work, shooting down nearly three quarters of the incoming Archer missiles before they were able to hit. Fire began to blossom on the corvette's hull as the remaining missiles hit home, but undeterred, the corvette quickly returned fire, splitting her plasma fire between the _Lemnos_ and the _Kilkis._

"Weaps, load up another AP shell into gun two, lock onto target 12-Bravo's main reactor and fire when ready," Yirenkyi calmly ordered, even as the _Kilkis_ rocked as she was hit with multiple plasma bolts.

"Aye sir!"

"Captain! Emergency message from the _Salamis!_ Target 5-Alpha has broken through in sector three seven niner five and headed straight for the _Black Stallion_!"

"Dammit! Alright, Weaps, belay that order! Comms, signal the _Lemnos_ , inform her of the situation and let her know she's on her own for now! Helm, emergency starboard thrusters, hard to port! Divert to sector three seven and move to intercept! If that civilian yacht goes down, then this entire battle was for nothing! Weaps, get a firing solution on target 5-Alpha with missile pods Item through Mike, gun two, and standby to engage! Draw that destroyer's attention onto us!"

There was a loud _**BANG**_ and Spaatz once again found himself forced hard against his crash webbing as the _Kilkis_ made an abrupt, one hundred and thirty degree turn to the left. The stars on his display became blurs before abruptly becoming whole again, and his tactical display immediately highlighted and zoomed in on a single Covenant destroyer closing in on a brightly yellow colored, dart like civilian yacht in the distance.

"All batteries, fire, _FIRE_!"

The _Kilkis_ fired. A single MAC shell and nearly a hundred missiles quickly crossed the distance between the destroyer and the _Kilkis,_ but the span was such that the destroyer was able to see the incoming rounds and begin evasive maneuvers. Pulse laser turrets opened up, shooting down missiles, while the destroyer itself quickly spun around on its longitudinal axis, presenting her narrower profile to the _Kilkis_ and causing the MAC shell to just barely miss her. The destroyer immediately turned all her attention towards the _Kilkis_ , and Spaatz could see a massive amount of energy building up at the destroyer's forward plasma beam emitter.

"Fire port side emergency thrusters!" Yirenkyi barked, and the _Kilkis_ jumped to the right microseconds before a pencil-thin beam of pure energy cut through the area the _Kilkis_ had just occupied. "Helm, check five degrees port! Weaps, lock missile pods Uniform through Zulu onto target 5-Alpha's engines then bracket that ship with MAC one and three! Fire when ready!"

The _Kilkis_ fired again, this time far more accurately. The first MAC shell hit the edge of the destroyer's shields, causing them to light up as the projectile skimmed along the length of the ship, while the second shell hit dead on, disabling them completely and damaging some of her dorsal pulse laser turrets. The destroyer hastily fired off a number of decoys, but they alone weren't enough to disable all of the incoming missiles, of which a little more than half were able to hit home. The destroyer's main thrusters began to flicker, then their blue glow disappeared entirely.

"Weaps, load up AP in gun two, target their bridge and fire at will!"

The destroyer was still reeling from the initial attack and thus, was unable to do anything to avoid the next salvo. The heavy shell hit the ship dead on. Chunks of purple armor were thrown in all directions as the shell forced its way through the dorsal side of the ship and exited clear out through the other side. Fire and secondary explosions began erupting from the breach, but even with two massive holes in her hull, the destroyer wasn't dead yet. She quickly retaliated, launching two plasma torpedoes and opening up with her plasma cannons.

"VAMPIRE VAMPIRE VAMPIRE! Incoming plasma torpedoes bearing niner seven three!" the operations officer yelled, even as the _Kilkis_ shook as she was raked from bow to stern with plasma cannon fire.

"Launch chaff and standby to activate starboard side emergency thrusters on my mark! MARK!"

The _Kilkis_ leapt to the left, but even then, there were two massive explosions that caused rumblings through the entire ship.

"We're hit!"

"Damage report!"

"Captain, we have a breach in the outer hull and a fire has broken out on deck C!"

"Sound emergency evacuation alarm in that section! Give the crew thirty seconds to either get out or find some O2 masks, and then seal it off! Helm, give me a half turn rotation port side on our longitudinal axis and give me a fresh section of armor to present to the Covenant! Officer of the Deck, get damage control parties down to that breach and begin repairs, on the double! Weaps, status on the MACs?"

"Guns one and three are sixty percent charged, gun two is at thirty percent sir!"

"Not good enough. Load missile pods Alpha through Echo, lock onto the ventral breach on 5-Alpha and fire as she bears! Let's finish this!"

"Aye si - wait! Sir, I'm getting a signal... the Covenant are falling back!"

Sure enough, outside, the Covenant warships that were attacking this sector of the planet were breaking contact, including the destroyer the _Kilkis_ was fighting against. None of them had stopped firing yet, but all fourteen of them were slowly turning around, back towards deep space.

"Captain, I'm reading slipspace ruptures just forward of their bows on all fourteen Covenant ships!"

"Including target 5-Alpha?"

"Aye sir!"

"How is that even possible?! With two massive hull breaches, the stress from the transition to and from slipstream space should rip that ship apart!"

"Under normal circumstances, yes sir, but these are Covenant ships we're dealing with, no one really knows what they're capable of!"

"Then we need to take it out before it leaves! Weaps, status?"

"MACs one and three at ninety percent sir!"

"No good! Comms, connect me to _Astoria Station_!"

"Connection is live sir!"

"Kilkis Actual to Astoria Station, target 5-Alpha is all yours, over!"

 _"Copy that Kilkis. Astoria Station firing in three, two, one, MARK!"_

A massive ball of fire erupted from the muzzle of Astoria Station's Mark V "Super" Magnetic Accelerator Cannon. Firing a slug that weighed twice as much as the _Kilkis_ was capable of, the round smashed right into the destroyer's stern and proceeded to cut diagonally through the length of the ship. The slipspace portal that had just begun to form off the destroyer's bow instantly disappeared as all power to her engines were cut. Then -

"Sir, I'm reading a massive surge of energy from within target 5-Alpha! Energy output has jumped by three hundred percent!"

"She's got a reactor breach! She's going critical! All craft, stand clear!"

The destroyer vanished in a brilliant flash of light, and a spherical shockwave could be seen erupting from somewhere near the destroyer's stern. The shockwave passed through the rest of the destroyer, ripping it to shreds. Large sections of the destroyer were hurtled in all directions, including one particularly large piece that spun in the direction of another Covenant light cruiser. The section slammed into the cruiser's shields, causing it to light up, but the cruiser was able to escape further damage when it abruptly disappeared into slipspace. She was quickly joined by the rest of her compatriots, and Spaatz let out a sigh of relief as the last of the Covenant ships vanished.

The relief didn't last long.

"Kanin, what's the butcher's bill?" Spaatz asked as he leaned back into his command chair, watching as Captain Yirenkyi and his crew began doing status checks of their own.

"From JTF Astoria, the UNSC _Excalibur II_ was destroyed with all hands lost," Kanin somberly reported. "The UNSC _Kenton_ was also destroyed, however CSAR was able to recovery eighty-three percent of her crew. The UNSC _Aikens_ was damaged by six separate plasma torpedoes and has suffered from power loss as a result. The cruiser is currently being towed back to dry docks as we speak for damage assessment, however preliminary reports suggest it will take a minimum of three months before the _Aikens_ is able to return to active duty. Air Force carrier UNSC _Richard Bong_ was damaged by an explosion inside one of her hanger bays, the cause is currently unknown, however Colonel Chekov asserts his ship will be able to maintain their position in formation. Air Force gunship losses include _PGM-19, PGM-116, PGE-121, PGE-1019,_ and _PGE-2211_."

"Casualties from TF Whiskey include the UNSC _Illustrious(2),_ whose main battery was destroyed due to a ruptured barrel, causing twenty-eight casualties. The UNSC _São Paulo(2)_ lost six Longswords, as well as an electronic attack Longsword. The UNSC _Daedalus, Salamis, Lemnos_ and _Kilkis(2)_ are all reporting non-disabling hull damage."

"And the Covenant losses?"

"Target 5-Alpha, a _RPV_ -class destroyer, was destroyed, as was target 5-Charlie, a _CRS_ -class light cruiser. Targets 9-Bravo, 12-Bravo, and 20-Bravo, all _SDV_ -class corvettes, were damaged, however all were able to successfully withdraw."

Spaatz waited for Kanin to continue, but he didn't. "That's it?"

"Yes sir. Oh, the civilian yacht, _Black Stallion_ , is thanking us for the rescue and is requesting permission to leave the system."

"Oh, _now_ he's requesting permission to leave the system, huh? He couldn't have asked fifteen minutes ago and saved us the hassle of trying to save his ass, now could he?" Spaatz angrily snarled.

Kanin didn't respond, but Spaatz could see him nodding his head in agreement. Spaatz sighed.

"Kanin, tell that little prick he is to leave my system and never come back, otherwise, I'll shoot his ship down myself. Furthermore, when he returns to another UNSC controlled colony, have the authorities ground his ship and strip him of his captain's license; if that asshole can't be bothered to obey military orders in the middle of a Covenant attack, then he shouldn't be the captain of a spaceship at all."

"With pleasure sir."

"Admiral, sir!" _Kilkis'_ operations officer suddenly called out. "JTF North Pole is under attack: General Ambani is requesting the assistance of TF Whiskey!"

"Sir, we're also getting reports from JTF Maleth that they too are under Covenant attack," _Kilkis'_ communications officer reported.

"Are either of those positions coming under attack by those battlecruisers or that heavy cruiser?" Spaatz demanded to know.

"No sir."

"Do we have any idea where _any_ of those capital ships are located?"

"Negative sir."

Spaatz grounded his teeth together. "Until the Covenant decide to commit those ships to the attack, I cannot allow the release of TF Whiskey. Admiral Steiner and General Ambani are unfortunately just going to have to hold their positions with the resources they have at hand."

Both communications officers nodded and turned away to convey Spaatz's orders, leaving Spaatz to stew about the circumstances the Covenant had forced him in.

For the last hour or so, the Covenant had been launching one attack after another on Spaatz's defensive line. The attacks were rarely conducted by more than a handful of ships, and the attacks themselves weren't that serious; the vast majority of the time, all the Covenant would do was fly in, fire a score of plasma torpedoes to cause some chaos, and then withdraw just as quickly. It wasn't hard to figure out what the Covenant were doing: they were probing Spaatz's line, searching for a weak spot, trying to lure ships away from Actium's orbital defense platforms where they could be ambushed, and most of all, wear down the UNSC's numerical advantage.

None of what the Covenant was doing was all that surprising; in fact, most of it was pretty standard tactics when attacking a planet. Because the attackers weren't tied down to a geographical location like the defenders were, the attacking force always held the initiative. The attackers could chose when and where to attack and because of that, Spaatz was forced to disperse his forces around the entire colony in order to defend all avenues of approach, least he run the risk of the Covenant discovering a hole in his lines and exploiting it at the most inopportune moment.

But that was not to say Spaatz was completely helpless. To counter the Covenant attacks, Spaatz had two advantages over them: he had numbers and he had the home field advantage. To that end, Spaatz had divided his forces into a number of joint task forces, combining Navy cruisers, frigates, and destroyers with Air Force carriers and gunships, along with Marine Corps fighters for cover, all centered around one of the nine orbital defense platforms in geosynchronous orbit around Actium. Those JTFs formed the general line of defense, and the combination of firepower from all three service branches was more than enough to counter the probing attacks the Covenant kept launching.

Eventually though, the Covenant would grow tired of those small attacks and would inevitably commit to one massive push to break through Spaatz's defenses, no doubt finally committing their three battlecruisers and one _ORS_ -class heavy cruiser to the attack. Because that attack could take place anywhere around the world, Spaatz had formed Task Force Whiskey, combining all of his most powerful ships including all of the Navy's battleships and attack carriers assigned to the Ambracian System, and placed them under his direct command. TF Whiskey would then act as a sort of "quick reaction force," hanging back to preserve their strength all the while standing by, ready to counter any Covenant breakthrough.

At least, that had been the plan. In practice, things weren't going as smoothly as Spaatz had hoped.

The first two times the Covenant had attacked the JTFs, they had been utterly crushed, losing three destroyers, five light cruisers, and a single corvette at the cost of three UNSC's ships. After that though, instead of frittering away their strength on light probing attacks like Spaatz had hoped, the Covenant had instead turned to "sniping" his ships: with each attack, instead of attempting to cause as much damage as possible, the Covenant would instead expend all their ordnance on a single UNSC ship, inevitably destroying it, before immediately withdrawing to slipspace before the UNSC could respond in kind. If the Covenant kept that up, after a while, Spaatz's strength would get whittled away, one ship at a time. And time was on the Covenant's side: Spaatz's nearest reinforcements were still two hours away.

Conserving TF Whiskey's strength wasn't working out all that well either, mainly because of a single factor Spaatz had forgotten to account for: civilians. By now, the colonial government would have officially confirmed that Actium was under attack, and as per Spaatz's instructions, ordered all civilians to remain in place until UNSC forces could establish secure evacuation lanes. Unfortunately, there was always that one civilian who thought, just because he had an air radar and a radio scanner that was capable of decrypting low level military chatter, that he somehow knew more about the exact locations of Covenant ships than the UNSC Navy. And while he couldn't fault them for that, unfortunately some of Spaatz's ships had broken formation in order to try and rescue said civilian from his own stupidity. Naturally, they had been ambushed, forcing Spaatz to commit TF Whiskey to rescue his men, least their destruction leave a gaping hole in his defensive line.

It was all turning out to be one giant, frustrating mess.

"Admiral? I have ONI, AFIC, and INSCOM on the line for you," Kanin suddenly informed him.

Spaatz quickly sat up. He'd been expecting a call from them. "Good. Excellent. Kanin, set privacy screens to level one and feed the call directly to my tac display."

"Yes sir."

Spaatz waited until Kanin had done just that before accepting the call. The holographic images of three people appeared before him: Captain al-Cygni(3) of the Navy's Office of Naval Intelligence, Colonel Kendrick of Air Force Intelligence Command(4), and Lieutenant-Colonel Harper of the Army's Intelligence and Security Command(5). All three were the commanding officers of their respective branches' military intelligences' offices here in the Ambracian System.

 _"Admiral Spaatz,"_ they greeted.

"Colonels. Captain," Spaatz said with a nod. "What do you all have for me?"

As expected, al-Cygni was the first one to speak up.

 _"We think we've identified the fleet that's attacking Actium sir,"_ she began.

"Oh?" Spaatz commented, interested. "Do tell."

Al-Cygni nodded and called forth a series of images. _"Based on an analysis of the type of encryption the Covenant are using, coupled with unique ship configurations and hull symbols, we believe the fleet is that of the Fleet of Furious Redemption(6). First identified during the Fall of Madrigal in 2528, the Furious Redemption has participated in a number of other battles since then, such as the Battle of Vodin in 2532, as well as the Invasion of New Harmony in 2537. Intelligence had placed the fleet as having been destroyed two years ago during Admiral Cole's Last Stand, so their appearance here is puzzling, however it's entirely possible our intelligence was simply wrong."_

 _"Or, conversely,"_ Kendrick suddenly interjected, _"the fleet was reconstituted after the battle."_

Al-Cygni inclined her head in Kendrick's direction. _"The physical evidence we have at hand would suggest the latter,"_ she agreed. _"Many of the ships we're currently seeing in orbit appear to be that of older models and configurations."_

"Very interesting," Spaatz commented. And he did mean it, as he always liked to know who he was fighting against, however this information was not quite what he'd been looking for. "But, and not to detract from your fine work ladies and gentlemen, that wasn't quite the intelligence I'd ask your departments to gather. If you recall, I had asked for any intelligence you could gather that would shed some light on the Covenant intentions for this world beyond the normal 'kill all humans and burn everything' sort of campaign."

 _"With all due respect sir, the intelligence you just heard, tells us_ **everything** _we need to know about the Covenant's motivation,"_ Kendrick interjected, picking up the thread of the conversation. _"You see sir, the Fleet of Furious Redemption is not a purifying fleet, nor is it an assault fleet, or even a support fleet. It's an_ **invasion** _fleet sir."_

Spaatz regarded Kendrick carefully. "So Colonel, you're telling me the Covenant are intending to launch a land crusade, is that it?"

All three intelligence directors exchanged glances. _"We actually think they intend to do more than that sir_ ," Kendrick began.

 _"We have reason to believe the Covenant are here to conquer Actium sir,"_ al-Cygni firmly stated.

Spaatz raised an eyebrow. "Conquer? As in, take over? The Covenant have never shown any interest in taking over any of our colonies before in the past. What makes you think Actium would be any different?"

 _"A number of factors sir,"_ al-Cygni said. _"For starters, the destroyer and corvette ratio of this fleet is much smaller than any other fleet we've seen in recent years, even for an invasion fleet. As you're undoubtedly aware sir, in Covenant naval doctrine, destroyers are used primarily in an anti-shipping role, analogous to the way we use our cruisers and battleships. Because of their tremendous firepower, they are also used to glass planets, which is why in fleets geared more towards assault or purification, destroyers vastly outnumber any other ship classification. On the other hand, corvettes are a bit more versatile, and can be used in a number of other roles_ **including** _, troop transport."_

 _"Furthermore sir,"_ Kendrick continued, _"my department has been analyzing the data we received from the skirmish within Tenedos' rings, and we noticed the amount of fighters the cruisers deployed prior to the destruction of JTF Omaha was far lower than what an_ ORS _-class or_ CSS _-class cruiser are actually capable of carrying. Now, there can be a number of alternative explains for the general lack of fighter support, however I believe the explanation is simple: the cruisers aren't carrying more fighters because they don't have any more hanger space. And the reason why they don't have any more hanger space is because those hangers are being used to haul other supplies like, say, vehicles for a ground assault. I believe this because normally Covenant capital ships form the spearhead of any Covenant assault, however I'm sure you've noticed how very conservative they've been with their most powerful ships."_

 _"Not only that sir,"_ al-Cygni added, _"the phrase 'collateral damage' simply doesn't exist in the Covenant doctrine manual; we know because we've checked. Yet, the Covenant forces here have been unusually renitent with their shots, making sure there are no stray shots that could potential hit the planet. We can't think of another reason why they would do that unless they were concerned about damaging a prize for which they wish to capture."_

"But what would they need Actium for?" Spaatz asked. "It seems to me the Covenant would be putting themselves in a rather vulnerable position, as it would give the UNSC a location we could finally strike back at."

 _"Sir, I'm going to show you a series of images we've capture, and perhaps the answer will be a bit more clear,"_ al-Cygni said. _"This is an image of a ship which ONI has designated as CCS-00173, though the ship's name might actually be the_ 'Fervent Crusader' _or_ 'Hammer of Justice.' _We're not entirely sure which one it actually is. At any case, this a picture of the ship taken during the Battle of Vodin in 2532."_

An image of a standard looking _CSS_ -class battlecruiser appeared on his screen. Nothing of the image looked out of place, and Spaatz was tempted to ask what he was looking for, when another picture appeared on his screen.

 _"This is an image taken during the Battle of New Harmony in 2537."_

Another image of a _CSS-_ class battlecruiser appeared on his screen. This one appeared almost identical to the first image, but after a few more seconds of study, Spaatz began to pick out some subtle differences, making him wonder if they were two different ships. Before he could say anything though, al-Cygni continued, calling forth another couple images.

" _Then, what we have here is an image captured from the Battle of Psi Serpentis in 2543. And finally, one taken an hour and a half ago in orbit around Tenedos. We are ninety-nine percent certain these images are all of the same ship. Look closely at the hull sir. Notice anything?"_ al-Cygni asked.

Spaatz studied the images carefully, enlarging them, and spinning them around so that they were all orientated in the same direction. Finally, after he superimposed them, Spaatz quickly noticed the slight discolorations in the ship's hull that were starting to appear as time continued. It took him a few moments to realize what they meant.

"The ship has been repaired multiple times," Spaatz announced, enlarging the last image and studying it very carefully. "With what appears to be increasingly poor quality materials."

Al-Cygni nodded. _"Exactly sir. Sir, since the Covenant glassed Harvest two decades ago, ONI, AFIC, and the rest of the intelligence community has been working non-stop to try and locate a Covenant controlled world so that we could finally strike back and potentially force the Covenant to scale back their assault on our worlds. We have yet to find one, or even a hint of one. There are a lot of theories as to why that is, ranging from the exotic to the absurd, however the most plausible explanation seems to be, Covenant worlds are much further away than we realized. However, if that's the case sir, then the further and further the Covenant advance into UNSC controlled space -"_

"The further and further they get from their supply lines," Spaatz finished. Al-Cygni nodded and Kendrick quickly jumped in to continue the conversation.

 _"Precisely sir. Currently, our best hypothesis? The Covenant came to this world because they were attracted by the high concentration of iron ore just beneath the planet's crust. Iron ore, of course, being one of the base ingredients used to create the nanolaminate plating the Covenant use for their ship's hulls. The fact that we were here already was just a coincidence."_

 _"Note sir, none of this is without precedence,"_ al-Cygni added. _"Sir, have you heard of_ Operation: PROMETHEUS(7) _?"_

Spaatz stiffened.

"I have," he cautiously admitted. "It took place sometime in 2537 near the edge of what was at the time, UNSC controlled space, I believe? Aside from that, all I know about the operation is that it is top secret, eyes only, level ten clearance, which is why I never bothered looking into it any further."

 _"You can relax Admiral: my job here is to gather intelligence, not keep secrets. That's Section Three's job,"_ al-Cygni assured him. _"Actually, the reason why I bring it up is because I've been cleared by Admiral Parangosky to inform you that the objective of that operation was the destruction of a Covenant shipyard. And that the operation was a success."_

Spaatz was intrigued. "And ONI now believes the Covenant are attempting to establish another one here on Actium?"

 _"Yes sir."_

Captain al-Cygni fell silent as Spaatz sat back in his chair, considering everything he'd just been told. If what his intelligence chiefs were telling him turned out to be accurate, this was something Spaatz could potentially exploit.

"If the Covenant are looking to make landfall, then they'll have to make a push soon," Spaatz began, thinking out loud. "They have to know UNSC reinforcements are coming. That's going to pressure them to make a move soon, to strike when we are weakest.

" _While I hate to disagree with you Admiral, I must. At the current moment, we're not at our weakest, we're at our strongest,"_ Kendrick said. _"At the moment, we have the advantage of numbers not just in ships, but we also have the ability to make use of excellent force multipliers, such as our ODPs, as well as our numerous surface assets. The Covenant have no real reason to attack us now. And yes, while it is true that reinforcements will cause our strength to grow, we also have to realize that the Covenant too will undoubtedly be receiving reinforcements of their own. And while I don't doubt that High Command will give us any and all assets we require to defend this world, there is a limit as too how many reinforcements we are capable of receiving whereas the Covenant can continue to grow exponentially."_

"And why is that Colonel?" Spaatz asked, even though he was pretty sure he knew the answer already.

" _Because of the fact that we're on the defensive, not just in this battle here sir, but in the entire war, whereas the Covenant are not. We cannot afford to assemble our entire fleet in one location, least we run the risk of allowing a separate colony to fall under attack, whereas the Covenant could amass their entire navy here if they chose to,"_ Kendrick pointed out.

Spaatz grunted. It was just as he suspected. This was part of the reason why he always hated being on the defensive: there was no way he could be proactive and try to counter the Covenant's plans before they began, he could only react. "Bottom line, ladies and gentlemen: what are you telling me?"

" _All three of our departments have done a separate analysis of the Covenant's current tactics Admiral, and all three of our departments have come to the same conclusion,"_ al-Cygni began. _"If the Covenant continue to maintain their current hit and run strategy, we will last, at most, all of three standard Actium days before the entire Actium Defense Fleet is crippled enough to the point where it will not be able to interfere with any degree of significance against a Covenant landing."_

"And pray tell, how did you come up to _that_ conclusion?"

" _Our current kill to death rate per hour sir. Ignoring the Covenant's initial two attacks because it's doubtful they will make_ that _mistake again, we're losing five ships to every one of theirs. Ships that, we're not readily able to replace, even with the influx of reinforcements. And that's before the Covenant bring their capital ships into play, which would tip the ratio even further in their favor. And while we might be able to even the odds if we were to utilize our own capital ships, the simulations aren't promising, owing to the simple fact that we_ **can't** _leave Actium's orbit. Not unless we want the colony to fall. Whereas, the Covenant can always withdraw, make repairs, and then start the process all over again."_

Spaatz sighed. That had been the conclusion he and Kanin had come to, after running an analysis of their own. But he'd been hoping they had been wrong. "And how are you proposing we counter the Covenant's tactics?"

Al-Cygni started to look uncomfortable. _"We need the Covenant to commit to a surface attack,"_ she reluctantly told him. _"If the Covenant were to make a landing right now, it would tie their forces down to a single geographic location, same as us, pushing them into a pitch battle one that, with our superior numbers,_ **we'll** _have the advantage. Furthermore, with a landing, the Covenant would be required to divide their forces as they would not only need to defend their fleet against air attacks, but also to protect their landing site against our ground troops."_

"And how do you propose we convince the Covenant to commit to such an attack?"

 _"We make a hole for them,"_ Harper suddenly said, speaking up for the first time since the meeting began. Spaatz slowly turned to him.

"Apologies Colonel, there must have been a slight disruption in our connection," Spaatz said. "Because I could have sworn I heard you propose I open a hole in my defensive line and invite the Covenant down to the surface. But surely I couldn't have heard that correctly."

 _"No sir. That is, if not the exact phrasing, the essence of what I said,"_ Harper unrepentantly replied.

Spaatz stared at him. "Are you out of your mind Colonel? That is the exact event I'm doing my best to prevent! Why in god's good name would I allow the Covenant access to this world?"

 _"Because it's the only wait to avert a greater disaster sir,"_ Harper calmly informed him. _"The facts cannot be denied Admiral: the Covenant are here to conquer this planet, meaning there_ **will** _be an invasion. There is no question of that. What is in question is the_ **when** _and the_ **where** _, and the answers to that will no doubt be some variation of the phrase 'when it is most inconvenient for us,' because as my counterparts have pointed out, our strength will only wane from this point forward, while the Covenant can only grow. By allowing the Covenant to land at a spot of our choosing, we can at least eliminate the number of unknown factors."_

" _Make no mistake, sir,"_ Harper continued. _"I'm not proposing we simply allow the Covenant to land at any spot around the world on a whim. I'm proposing we fool the Covenant into landing at a spot most optimize for our purposes where the terrain favors the defenders, yet also minimizes the amount of damage the Covenant is capable of achieving."_

"And I trust you have a spot in mind already?"

" _I have several, sir. All I require is your seal of approval."_

Spaatz pinched the bridge of his nose. He couldn't believe he was even considering this, but unfortunately, the facts could not be denied. "Alright Colonel, let's hear it."

" _Any of the major islands would do sir. Given that roughly sixty-four percent of Actium's surface is water, the Actium Colonial Government has spent considerable time, money, and resources in the last two decades in creating a 'blue-water' Actium Navy. The vast majority of their ships are gear towards planetary defense and as such, are equipped with inter-planetary weapon systems, however they can easily be repurposed for use against other surface targets. Having the Covenant land on an island would mean we could utilize said ships, while at the same time, limit the expansion of their landing zone. An island would also allow us to consider the use of nuclear weapons."_

"Actium has seven islands all over a hundred thousand square kilometers in size, Colonel," Spaatz pointed out from memory. "Which island did you have in mind in particular?"

" _The island of Cyprium would be ideal. Straddling the equator in the middle of the Euxine Ocean, the center of the island is a rainforest reserve while the outer edge is mainly geared towards tourism, of which it is currently between seasons, so civilian casualties would be kept to a minimum. The island is home to a number of military unit headquarters, many of which the Covenant would be forced to capture or destroy in order to facilitate further movement across the planet. Conversely, the presence of so many military installations means the island is rather fortified, and thus would be difficult for the Covenant to capture, necessitating them to commit a far greater force than required elsewhere, tying down their fleet even further."_

Spaatz nodded in understanding as he considered Harper's request. He had to admit, he didn't know much about the island of Cyprium, only that it was where General Iqbal's headquarters were located, and for that fact alone, Spaatz was tempted to give his approval. Unfortunately, military needs outweighed his petty desires.

"Unfortunately, while your reasoning is sound Colonel, there is one noticeable flaw: the Covenant aren't that stupid," Spaatz pointed out. "Despite their name, the Covenant Navy actually has very little in terms of maritime assets, and the Covenant know that. They would _never_ commit to an island attack because they know, just as we do, they would have very little capability to continue the offensive once the island had been captured. No, if I allow this, it can't be an island, it would have to be on the mainland."

" _We had considered that, and I do have a list of alternatives sir,"_ Harper reported. _"Ideal mainland location would be the Thracia Province, on the continent of Hellas."_

Spaatz raised an eyebrow. "Why there?"

 _"Geography,"_ was Harper's simple reply. _"Thracia Province is surrounded by several natural barriers, boxing the province in, so to speak. To the east, the Euxine Ocean. To the west, roughly three hundred kilometers inland and separating the Thracia Province from the Dacia Province, there's the Haemus Mountain Range. The mountain range runs north to about the thirty-ninth parallel where it turns eastward towards the ocean, forming the northern border of Thracia. The interior of Thracia is rather hilly, with plenty of rivers and lakes that can be utilize as defensive hard points, as well as an extensive highway and railroad system in place that can facilitate the movement of reinforcements. In short sir, the terrain highly favors the defenders."_

Harper fell silent, leaving Spaatz to consider his proposal. Mentally, he reviewed everything he had just been told, from the identification of the Covenant fleet attacking them now, to their possible mission objectives, to the amount of losses his fleet had taken in comparison to the Covenant Navy, and then finally to Harper's proposal.

"Colonel, answer me this: if I do allow the Covenant to gain a lodgement on the surface, what guarantees do we have that our ground forces will be able to contain, and then eliminate said lodgement?" Spaatz finally asked. "It seems to be an awfully large risk, allowing them access to the surface, as the situation could easily turn against us."

 _"There are absolutely no guarantees our ground forces would be able to contain the situation,"_ Harper replied, in a surprisingly honest manner.

 _"Admiral, while we can't guarantee our success on the ground, we can guarantee that we_ **will** _be defeated in orbit,"_ Kendrick cut in. _"At which point, the Covenant will be free to attack at any spot around the world and destroy our forces with impunity."_

 _"With this plan sir, we'll at least be able to minimize some of the damage done to our ground troops, while allowing us the opportunity to inflict the maximum amount of casualties on the Covenant as possible,"_ al-Cygni agreed.

Spaatz nodded, then glanced at Harper. "Colonel Harper: if this operation were to be put into effect, then the UNSC Army will be conducting the bulk of the fighting. Tell it to me straight Jack: will the Army hold?"

Harper leaned back in his chair and seemed to consider Spaatz's question. _"Due to recent deployments, the Thracian garrison is admittedly depleted, however I do believe the terrain is such that whatever forces remain will be able to hold out long enough for reinforcements. So yes Admiral, I do believe the Army will hold."_

Spaatz nodded. "Then I suppose all that's left to do is to figure out how to create a plausible hole," he reluctantly announced.

Before any of his intelligence chiefs could say anything, a simple text message from Kanin appeared on his screen.

 _JTF Cyprium under attack. No sign of any Covenant capital ships._

Cyprium.

Spaatz glanced at the assembled group. "Never mind ladies and gentlemen, I believe I have just figured out a way to create a hole. Kanin!"

Kanin instantly appeared on his screen. "Sir?"

"I presume General Iqbal is currently demanding the release of TF Whiskey?"

"Yes sir."

"Inform General Iqbal I cannot release TF Whiskey until we are able to confirm the location of those Covenant capital ships. However," Spaatz glanced at his intelligence chiefs, "I will allow him to recall his ships from JTF Byzas, who should be currently in orbit over the Thracia Province."

"Begging your pardon sir?" Kanin asked, sounding confused. "Is that wise?"

"Just do it Kanin."

"Yes sir."

Kanin's avatar disappeared, leaving Spaatz alone with his intelligence chiefs.

 _"Well,"_ Kendrick began, _"that's it then sir?"_

"It is," Spaatz confirmed. "Colonel Kendrick? Alert your staff and have them begin preparations for the immediate evacuation of all civilians from the Thracia Province. Captain al-Cygni, inform your counterparts within the Actium Navy to start deploying ships towards Hellas. And Colonel Harper?"

Spaatz glanced at Harper, who was patiently waiting for his orders.

"Prepare your troops for a surface attack."

* * *

1\. The UNSC _Excalibur II_ , _Kenton_ , and _Aikens_ were names chosen at random.

2\. The UNSC _Illustrious_ (which is intended to be an _Epoch_ -class heavy carrier, though it's not exactly clear in the story) was named after the HMS _Illustrious_ , an _Illustrious_ -class aircraft carrier that saw service during WW2 with the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean and Pacific Theaters and made famous for, among other things, being the first fleet carrier to strike against an enemy fleet.

\- The UNSC _São Paulo_ (which is also intended to be another _Epoch_ -class heavy carrier) is named after the former Brazilian aircraft carrier the NAe _São Paulo,_ which up until 2017, was the second of the only two aircraft carriers the Brazilian Navy ever possessed.

\- UNSC _Daedalus_ (which is intended to be _Vindication-_ class light battleship)was named after the USS _Daedalus_ from the Stargate Universe.

\- UNSC S _alamis, Lemnos_ and _Kilkis_ (all are intended to be _Vindication-_ class light battleships) are all named after three of the only four battleships the Hellenic (Greek) Navy has ever possessed (all from before WW1.) They in turn, are all named after various, victories Greek battles. (The _Salamis_ and the fourth battleship, the _Vasilefs Konstantinos_ were purchased from German and French shipyards, respectively, in the early 1900's, but never completed due to the outbreak of WW1. As such, they were technically never commissioned by the Hellenic Navy)

3\. al-Cygni is intended to be Jilan al-Cygni, a canon character who first appeared in the novel, _Halo: Contact Harvest_ , where she acted as the military commanding officer of the defense of Harvest during the Covenant invasion. She is/was also Sergeant Major Avery Johnson's lover.

4\. **A** ir **F** orce **I** ntelligence **C** ommand (or AFIC for short) is the former name of the United States Air Force military intelligence gathering agency (USAF counterpart to the real world US Navy's ONI.) The name was used between 1991 and 1993 before it was changed. Since 2014, the agency is simply known as the "Twenty-Fifth Air Force (25 AF), but I liked the name AFIC better.

5\. **In** telligence and **S** ecurity **Com** mand (INSCOM) is the current name for the United States Army intelligence gathering agency (again, the Army counterpart to ONI and 25 AF.)

6\. This is a canon Covenant fleet. It first appeared in the graphic novel, _Halo: Uprising._ The fleet participated in the Invasion of the Sol System in 2552 (as depicted in _Halo 2_ ,) and most notably was responsible for the assault on Mars.

7\. This is a canon operation. First appearing in the book, _Halo: Ghost of Onyx_ , it was the operation that caused the near-complete annihilation of Alpha Company of the Spartan-III program.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

 **Wayward Station, High Orbit, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0935**

 **Amber**

Amber was bored.

It was hard to believe, but it was true.

In her experience, being bored in the military was a bad thing. Mainly because there always seemed to some sort of chief petty officer lurking around the corner, waiting for the exact moment for some hapless sailor to get bored, so they could pounce on them and spirit said sailor away to some inane work party on the other side of the ship. Or the good idea fairy would suddenly stop by and bless the ship's newest butterbar with another "great" idea and suddenly the entire division would find itself in another this-is-optional-but-just-kidding-it's-totally-not "team-building exercise."

Of course, that was when the ship was in garrison. Having never been in combat before, Amber had kind of assumed the opposite would hold true when the ship was deployed to the front, and that being bored in an active combat zone would have been a good thing. In her mind, being bored in a combat zone would have meant she wasn't sitting on the edge of her seat, about to piss her pants, waiting to see if every breath she took would have been her last. Or that every shake and tremble was a sign her ship was about to fall apart and throw the entire crew into the cold vacuum of space.

Yep, being bored in a combat zone, Amber had assumed, would have been a blessing.

But now that Amber _was_ in an active combat zone, she was finding that being bored there was somehow _worse_ than being bored in garrison. Because yes, while _her_ life wasn't currently in danger, that didn't necessarily mean the same could be said about her friends. And because she really wasn't doing much at the moment, Amber didn't have anything that could distract her from the fears that were currently plaguing her mind. Fears such as: where was Poolsie? Was she okay? What was she doing? Despite having only really met during boot camp, Amber had spent most of her military career next to Poolsie, making this occasion one of the few times in the last couple of years they were separated from each other and Amber was finding the separation to be more stressful than she would have thought.

Then there were the fears about her ship, the _Gabrielle_. Amber hadn't seen the _Gabrielle_ since the ship left the docking station some two hours ago and hadn't had any contact or visual of her ship since then. She hadn't even heard a word about its status. Given the chaos and the vastness of space, that shouldn't have been that unusual expect for the fact that according to scuttlebutt, several hundred UNSC warships had already been destroyed, many with all hands lost. Amber had no way of telling whether the communications blackout between her and the ship was the result of her simply not being in range of the ship, or whether it was because the _Gabrielle_ was one of those hundreds of casualties and thus no longer had the capability of communicating with anyone on the mortal plane. Was Amber's home away from home really gone? Were all her friends dead? Was she the only one left?

And Amber hadn't even started to really worry about her aunt who, as far as she knew, was still on the surface of Actium, getting ready for the Covenant to make landfall. Amber had tried to call her up via her direct line, but the phone system was _flooded_ with calls and Amber didn't have the clearance to try to use encrypted military lines.

In short, Amber was feeling rather scared, and cranky at the moment.

Amber let out a very loud sigh. She almost couldn't believe it, but right now, she almost wished a petty officer would suddenly appear and assign her to some random work party. She would be forced to sit around and work on some bullshit assignment, but at the very least it would have kept her distracted and her mind occupied. Because right now, there was literally nothing for her to do.

She couldn't leave her turret because the station was still at general quarters and the Covenant threat was far from over, which made sense, but unfortunately there wasn't anything left she could do inside her turret. She had already calculated all of her turret's fields of fire, mentally mapping out all of her obstructed lines of sights, location of obstacles, and what not. She had spent plenty of time getting familiar with her turret, getting a feel for its turning speed as well as how long it would take for her gun shield to engage. She had already triple checked the status of her Onager, its barrel, as well as all five capacitors, making sure they were all in perfect condition and that there was a minimal chance of failure for the upcoming battle. Amber had even gotten on her radio to find out more information about the station, and had learned the fire control director for this section was the same asshole that had assigned her to this turret in the first place, one FC1 McCreary, and that aside from her, McCreary was in charge of three other Onager turrets. Upon learning that, Amber had immediately tried to draw the other gunners into a conversation, but no one else seemed particularly interested, and all talk quickly died out, leaving Amber with absolutely nothing to distract her.

Bored out of her mind yet, feeling completely stressed at the same time, Amber grabbed ahold of her control stick and idly began rotating her backup sights around so she could take another look at the area around her in the hopes there was something that would catch her attention. Unfortunately, just like how it had been fifteen minutes ago when she had tried the exact same thing, everything looked exactly the same: she was surrounded by all sorts of military defense platforms, all of which had gathered together to form a very wide circle, with ByzasStation being right in the center of it all. All the platforms were at full alert, with weapons primed and ready for an attack that was quickly looking like it wasn't coming.

Panning outwards away from ByzasStation and towards interplanetary space, Amber casted around until she spotted the ships that made up JTF Byzas, spread out in a rough battle line. Forming the primary line of defense, all ships were spaced several hundred kilometers apart with their forward bows pointed outwards, ready to repeal the invaders. Like the defensive platforms that surrounded her, all the ships were motionless, floating idyllically through the cold vacuum of space.

Letting out another loud sigh, Amber leaned back in her seat, vigorously rubbing her face. She wasn't sure how much of this she could take. She could almost feel her sanity slipping away by the second! Honestly, she didn't know what was worse: the boredom she was facing, her fears for her friends and family, or the anticipated but not yet manifested Covenant attack.

Movement on her screen caught her eye and she slowly looked up, not really anticipating she would see anything. It took a few moments for her to process exactly what she was seeing, but when she finally did, she abruptly sat up in alarm and grabbed her radio.

"Delta Fire Control, this is turret Eight Delta: are you seeing what I'm seeing?" Amber asked as she stared intently at her screen. "Because, um, from what I can tell, it looks like half our ships are abandoning the battle line."

Indeed, on Amber's screen, nearly a dozen warbirds were firing their thrusters and moving _away_ from the rest of the formation.

At once, Amber's radio came to life as the other three turret gunners in her section began to the notice the same thing.

" _What the… where the hell do these assholes think they're going?"_

" _Delta Fire Control, Seven Delta. Uh, I'm seeing the same thing here. Is there something we should know?"_

" _Five Delta here. It looks like it's just the Air Force pulling out."_

" _Oh, it's_ just _the Air Force? Never mind then. Waste of material those flyboys are."_

Amber snorted in amusement at that last sentence, though her levity didn't last long. While it was true Air Force ships were significantly more limited in the fight against the Covenant when compared to their Navy counterparts, at the very least they were good for filling in the ranks and sure enough, the withdraw of the Air Force was leaving noticeable gaps in the battle line.

" _Fire Control to all turrets,"_ McCreary's voice sounded over the radio, sounding irritated. _"Everyone calm down, there's nothing to be worried about. All we're doing is switching ships with another JTF: the Air Force wants to consolidate their ships over Cyprium. To make up for the shortfall, command is transferring a number of naval ships from other JTFs and reassigning them to our sector. Give it a few minutes for everyone to reform."_

Amber frowned as she considered what McCreary had just said. Nothing McCreary had just said made any sort of tactical or strategic sense and she decided to say as much.

"Fire Control, turret Eight here. That doesn't make any sense," Amber affirmed. "Why the hell would command suddenly decided to shuffle a bunch of ships around in the middle of a Covenant attack? And if it really was that essential, why wouldn't they send the reinforcements in first, _before_ taking ships _out_?"

" _Eight Delta, are you an unrestricted line officer? Are you currently positioned in any of the bridges or CICs on any of the ships or stations in the general AO?"_ McCreary snapped. _"Because if your answer is 'no' to any of those questions, then keep your damn commentary to yourself. You have no idea what's going on right now; you don't know what the big picture looks like and you've got no idea what our tactical dispersion is right now."_

Amber felt a surge of anger at McCreary's blunt dismissal of her concerns, but she suppressed the urge to fly off the handle. She didn't know what this guy's fucking problem was, but she wasn't interested in getting in a pissing contest with him. Still, she couldn't help but snap back, "I don't have to be URL officer to know that leaving a hole in your own defensive line doesn't make for a good strategy."

" _The officers making these decisions are some of the best officers the entire UNSC has to offer. I'm sure they've already taken all the factors into consideration, and don't need_ _ **you**_ _to point out any flaws. And even if they haven't, the gaps will only be there for a couple of minutes."_

"Yeah, but if the Covenant have even half a brain cell, they would know that this is the best time to launch an attack on our sector in order to take advantage of the expected chaos that rotating ships around will cause!" Amber pointed out.

 _"Turret Eight, shut. The. Fuck. Up. You don't - "_

Before McCreary could finish talking, he was suddenly interrupted by a small robotic voice.

 _"Slipspace rupture detected."_

 _"Oh shit! Fire Control, turret Five! I got visual on slipspace ruptures in sector three niner seven three!"_

Amber blanched at the call and immediately panned her gun sights over to that sector in time to see half a dozen slipspace portals appearing a couple thousand kilometers in front of JTF Byzas. Rapidly emerging from said portals came nearly two dozen Covenant warships of all classifications, shields primed and weapons ready to fire. Instantly all hell broke loose.

 _"Holy shit, we're under attack!"_

 _"Delta Fire Control, turret Seven. Are you seeing this? Are you seeing this?"_

 _"Of course I fucking see it! God dammit! How many ships is that?"_

 _"Five here: I count twenty-four Covenant warships!"_

 _"Fuck! Dammit turret Eight, you just_ had _to say something!"_

Amber ignored that last part as she panned around to see how the fleet was responding. They must have been distracted by the rotation of ships because they were only now beginning to react. But before most of the ships could reorientate themselves in the direction of the enemy, the Covenant promptly open fired.

The space between the two fleets lit up as plasma and laser fire spewed across the great expanse and slammed into the UNSC forces. Immediately casualties began to light up across the board. Amber watched in horror as one frigate get hit simultaneously by five separate plasma torpedoes causing fire and explosions to erupt all over her hull. Before the ship's crew could properly respond, she was immediately struck by a combination of plasma cannon fire and pulse lasers which simply caused the entire ship to disintegrate.

Panning over to the left flank, Amber watched as a _Halberd_ -class destroyer, almost identical in appearance to the _Gabrielle_ , just open up on all the Covenant within range with every weapon system they had. But before the ship could fire more than a single salvo, she was speared amidship by a plasma excavator beam. An explosion erupted from the destroyer's dorsal hull, corresponding roughly to the where the main reactor to the MAC was located, and immediately the destroyer fired her thrusters and began to break contact. But before the ship could travel further than a couple kilometers, a combination of plasma torpedoes and pulse laser fire gutted her, leaving her dead in space.

All across the line, the same scene was being repeated over and over again. Whether it was because they had been distracted by the unexpected reallocation of the Air Force, or whether it was because of the ferocity of the Covenant attack, or whether it was simply because of sheer numbers, more and more UNSC ships were going dark by the minute. But the Navy was quickly waking up and responding in turn.

In the center of the line, Amber could see a Covenant destroyer get struck by MAC rounds from an entire UNSC destroyer squadron. The rounds outright disabled the Covie shields and caused untold amounts of damage to the ship's hull. Before the Covenant could return fire though, the entire ship detonated in a brilliant blue flash and zooming in, Amber could just barely make out the shadow of an entire flight of Longswords peeling away as they finished their attack run.

Nearby, the UNSC _Canberra_ , a _Marathon_ -class cruiser which was acting as the flagship for JTF Byzas, was engaged in a furious dual with two Covenant corvettes. The space between the three ships was a maelstrom of explosions as all ships involved were rapidly exchanging fire, which was being countered by countermeasures, which in turn was getting intercepted by counter-battery fire. At first glance, it appeared to be a losing dual for the _Canberra_ as her opponents had energy shields and she didn't, but the _Canberra_ was maneuvering in such a way she was able to keep at least one corvette between her and the other corvette, forcing the Covenant to be very selective with their shots least they accident shoot each other. In the meantime, the _Canberra_ was free to fire with impunity, which she did, and soon Amber could see an explosion erupting from one of the corvette's hull, indicating that at least _that_ ship had lost her energy shields.

Unfortunately, such victories were rare and the Covenant's superior weapons and defenses were beginning to show as more and more UNSC ships were destroyed. Holes were beginning to form in the defensive line, most visibly on the left flank where at least ten Covenant warships alone were concentrating on forcing a breach.

"Son of a bitch," Amber whispered to herself as she watched the battle unfold on her screen. Despite the sheer brutality she was witnessing, she found herself unable to look away. "Where the fuck are our reinforcements!?"

There was a bright orange flash on the left flank as the last UNSC ship holding position there finally fell, blowing up under a concentrated amount of plasma fire. With nothing in their way any longer, the Covenant began speeding towards Actium.

"Oh shit, breach! The line is breached!" Amber yelled into her radio. Immediately she began charging all five of her capacitors and started reaching for the button that would open her gun shield and extend her turret into firing position.

" _Turret Eight, what the fuck are you doing?"_ McCreary immediately yelled in her ear. _"You don't have permission to deploy your gun! Keep it underneath the gun shield until I fucking tell you otherwise!"_

Amber grabbed her radio. "We can't just fucking sit here and do nothing!" she yelled back.

 _"You can and you will because I'm fucking ordered you to! Besides, it's not like you can do anything to those ships, especially at this range! So keep your gun locked! That goes for everyone! All Delta turrets, hold your fire and standby for further orders! Byzas Station will deal with the breach!"_

Amber growled, the urge to do _something_ almost overwhelming, but she managed to bring herself under control. Flushing her capacitors, Amber rotated her sights around, bring an image of Byzas Station on her screen.

She watched as the station sprang into action, firing her maneuvering thrusters and pivoting her massive superstructure around so that her main battery was aimed at the incoming ships. In her mind, Amber could almost picture the sight as the breech to the super MAC swung open, and a 3000 tonne ferric-tungsten round was dropped in. She could almost feel the hum in the air as power surged through each electromagnet along the length of the barrel propelling the round forward, and she could almost hear the sliding of metal against metal as the round rapidly picked up speed until -

 _ **WHOOMP!**_

\- there was a brilliant flash of light as ByzasStation fired!

In the time it took Amber to blink, the round had already crossed the distance between the station and her target, a Covenant corvette. The corvette immediately exploded as she took the round head on, her shields doing absolutely nothing to stop the massive projectile. Even before the ship could fully split apart, Byzas Station fired again, hitting another corvette and tearing a huge chuck out from her stern as the shell just barely missed. The blow threw the entire ship into a spin but as her crew attempted to recover, Byzas Station fired once more, this time hitting the ship dead center on her ventral hull and causing the entire corvette to simply disintegrate.

The Covenant began to return fire, scoring several hits and leaving burn marks along the length of Byzas Station's hull, but her armor held fast. In retaliation, Byzas Station fired two rounds in quick secession, instantly destroying a light cruiser, and causing massive damage to another corvette.

Watching all this, Amber was tempted to say the battle was quickly being brought under control, but as she glanced back at the rest of the defensive line, she realized how wrong she was. More than half of JTF Byzas had been destroyed already, with the Covenant only suffering light casualties in return. It was clear the entire defensive line was crumbling.

The fact that Actium's defensives were falling so quickly wasn't super surprising to Amber, especially given the disparity in firepower between the two sides. What was surprising was the fact that reinforcements had yet to appear. Surely the rest of the planet was seeing what was happening here? Why weren't they sending help? It was almost as if Command wanted this sector to get breached!

 _"Alright, all turrets, listen up!"_

McCreary's voice cut through Amber's mental tirade and she quickly sat up _. "JTF Byzas has taken too many casualties and Admiral Bishorn is ordering a general withdraw,"_ McCreary informed them. _"Our ships are going to break contact and fall back to position one three niner four and establish a secondary line of defense behind our orbital defense stations. That means we're about to become the next front line. All turrets, prime capacitors and standby for status check."_

Amber blanched as the full weight of McCreary's words hit her, and she hastily reached out to begin, once again, charging all five capacitors on her turret. Outside, she could see whatever remained of JTF Byzas slowly breaking contact and pulling away from the Covenant, flying back towards Actium and theoretically, to safety. All the while Byzas Station continued to lay down copious amounts of fire.

 _"All Delta turrets, confirm status,"_ McCreary barked. Amber immediately grabbed her radio.

"This is Eight Delta, primed and ready," she reported.

 _"Turret Six Delta, all good here."_

 _"Five Delta here, I'm - hang on, are the Covenant falling back?"_

Amber jumped at that and quickly glanced at her screen. Sure enough, by the looks of it, the Covenant were slowly pulling their ships back.

 _"What the... the Covenant are winning,"_ someone point out. _"Why are they falling back now?"_

 _"Maybe Byzas_ _Station was just too much for them to handle?"_ someone else suggested.

"That's never stopped them before," Amber muttered out loud as she studied the retreating ships.

Dropping her crosshairs over one corvette, Amber zoomed in until she was maxed out. There was something funny looking about that ship, and when she finally realized what it was, it became painfully obvious what the Covenant were doing and indeed, it was something that should have occurred to Amber from the start:

"Oh shit, they're launching fighters!"

On her screen, Amber could see dozens and dozens of all manner of Covenant fighters pouring out of the surviving Covenant ships: Seraph multirole fighters, Banshee interceptors, Phantom gunboats, even a couple of Vampire close-support fighters. Her HUD became one massive sea of red dots as her targeting computer attempted to keep track of all the enemy spacecraft, but it was a losing battle given how many of them there were.

The fighters quickly broke up into individual squadrons while their motherships made a hasty beat back to slipspace in order to avoid further loss to Byzas Station. Then, almost as one, every single fighter ignited their afterburners and started speeding towards Actium. Amber didn't need her computer to figure out where their trajectory would put them: they were all headed straight for Byzas Station.

Byzas Station abruptly fired again, but this time not at the retreating Covenant warships, but instead at the incoming fighters. The round passed right through the mass, leaving a series of miniature explosions in its wake as the much smaller ships simply had no defense against a projectile of that magnitude, but given how numerous they were, it just wasn't enough. While super MACs were humanity's most effective weapon against Covenant warships, against small craft and gunboats, it was like throwing a rock at a swarm of gnats for all the good it did. Which is where support stations like Wayward came in. Lightly armored but equipped with numerous anti-aircraft weapons, support stations were designed to handle the small craft to allow ODPs like Byzas Station to concentrate on the larger warships.

 _"Alright guys, listen up!"_ McCreary barked. _"We've got incoming bandits! You know what you need to do! Unlock weapons and standby to engage!"_

Amber reached out and pushed a button, opening the metal gun shield that protected her Onager turret and finally allowing it to fully extend. All around her, all sorts of gun and missile turrets were doing the same thing, emerging from their protective capsules and rising to the surface, covering the entire station with weapons.

 _"Here they come,"_ someone muttered over the radio and Amber glanced at her screen. She felt the saliva in her mouth dry up as she stared at the literal wall of red dots speeding towards her, and she quickly licked her lips.

 _"All turrets, wait for the order,"_ McCreary commanded, his voice tense. _"Kill sats are going to engage first, so don't fire until I say the word."_

Amber didn't quite trust herself to speak at the moment, so she clicked the talk button on her radio in acknowledgement instead and rotated her sights around to watch as the kill sats went to work.

Filling the space between all the orbital platforms were a bunch of military satellites, all armed with one or two missile pods. Small, cheap, and fragile, they were only capable of firing a single volley before they had to reload, but under certain circumstances, the added extra firepower they provided could mean the difference between life and death.

 _"Kill sats firing in... three, two,"_ McCreary counted over the radio, _"one..._ _ **mark**_ _!"_

Amber watched as nearly three hundred missiles were simultaneously fired. They quickly shot across the void, leaving visible white contrails in their wake as they charged towards the approaching onslaught. As expected, about a third of them immediately lost their target and veered off course due to Covenant ECM. About another third were destroyed as active countermeasures went to work, lighting up the space between the two warring parties with explosions. But the last hundred or so missiles...

Amber's screen lit up with violent blue explosions as the missiles slammed into the front ranks of the incoming swarm. Nearly three dozen Banshees, several Phantoms, and a couple of Seraphs were instantly destroyed, with dozens more damaged, leaving behind a sizable debris field that caused even more damage as the following ranks were forced to fly right through it. Yet despite all this, it hardly seemed to make a dent in the Covenant's numbers. What it did do though, was attract the Covenant's attention, and immediately a number of squadrons broke away from their advance on Byzas Station and started heading straight towards the other defense platforms.

 _"Lances are engaging!"_ McCreary reported and Amber glanced at the nearest Lance pod to her position and watched as the turret ripple fired its entire payload of Lance missiles before it was quickly lowered back into the station to be reloaded. Amber briefly wondered if that was the turret Poolsie was manning, or whether she was part of the reloading crew, but she was quickly distracted when her HUD suddenly highlighted a number of the incoming Seraphs.

 _"Delta turrets, these are your targets,"_ McCreary commanded. _"Ramparts and Lances will deal with the other aircraft, but this is our priority number one: we got to take out the Seraphs before they can tear this station apart. Lock onto a target and standby!"_

Amber rapidly moved her crosshairs around, looking for a Seraph to lock onto. A number of fighters already had red rings around them, indicating lock ons from other turrets, so Amber quickly found one that didn't. She hovered her crosshairs over the vehicle and waited until her reticle turned red.

 _"All turrets, hold fast,"_ McCreary ordered _"Wait for the command..."_

Amber nervously swallowed as the swarm drew closer and closer.

 _"Steady..."_

Outside, the Lance pods were reemerging from the station, freshly loaded missiles clearly sticking out from their tubes. Flames licked the side of the station as the pods fired a second volley.

 _"Standby..."_

Amber anxiously looked around. What the hell were they waiting for?

 _"Hold it..."_

On her screen, Amber watched as the missiles streak towards the Covenant, many of which scored hits, including two which slammed into the Seraph she had locked on to. Then -

 _"All batteries, OPEN FIRE!"_

Amber slammed her finger down on the trigger as hard as she could, trying to pour all of her fear, all of her hate, and all of the anxiety that had been building up inside of her for the last two hours into that one trigger pull. Her HUD shook as her Onager recoiled, but it wasn't enough to prevent her from seeing her round hit the Seraph, cut right through its weakened shields, and slam right into the nose.

"WOOHOO!" Amber cheered as the Seraph detonated in a violent blue explosion. "Screw you Covies!"

Finding herself sudden rejuvenized, Amber immediately panned her turret around, searching for another one of her assigned target as she felt her autoloader kick in as her capacitors began to recharge. Spotting an undamaged Seraph flying through the air, Amber planted her crosshairs over the spot slightly in front of it and as soon as her status light turned green, she fired. Almost immediately the shields on the Seraph lit up, but unlike her first kill, they were at full strength so her round failed to penetrate, but the impact was enough to outright disable them. The Seraph instantly began taking evasion actions but before it could get away, Amber disabled half her capacitors to allow for a faster recharge time and fired again.

Her second round hit the Seraph in the rear, impacting the area right above the engine housing, but at half power, the round failed to penetrate the Seraph's armored hull. The round must have damaged the engine itself though as the Seraph instantly started trailing smoke and quickly ceased all evasive maneuvering, giving Amber a clean shot. Switching back to full power, she fired again, this time putting a round right through the cockpit and clear out the other side. For a brief second, she could see fire shooting out from both holes before the entire Seraph simply blew up.

She started panning around, searching for another Seraph to kill, but before she could find one, a loud shrill filled her ears and the words "INCOMING MISSILE" flashed across her screen in big red letters. Without pausing to even think, Amber reflexively activated her gun shield and her turret immediately disappeared beneath the station's hull. Microseconds later, the fuel rod cannon came streaking in and slam into her gun shield, leaving a nasty burn mark but causing no other damage.

Hitting a button to re-deploy her turret, Amber swung it around, trying to figure out where that missile had come from, only to reflexively flinch as a series of blue plasma bolts splashed against her side.

Pausing only long enough to confirm nothing critical had been hit, she jerked her turret to the left to see a Banshee flying straight towards her, plasma cannons blazing. Dropping her crosshairs over it, Amber quickly fired but just as she pulled the trigger, the Banshee threw itself into a barrel roll, causing her round to miss, shooting by the Banshee and missing the portside gravity pod by mere centimeters. Spitting out a curse, Amber hastily disabled all but one of her capacitors before attempting to reacquire a lock but by then it was too late as the Banshee rocketed by overhead and Amber just wasn't fast enough to track it.

The Banshee started to bank around for another attack run, a green glow forming at its nose indicating it was prepping to fire another fuel rod cannon and Amber reached out for her gun shield but before she could do anything, a Lance missile came out of nowhere and slammed into the Banshee's side, completely obliterating it. Nevertheless, the remains of the Banshee continued forward along its path, and Amber winced as her turret was pelt with debris traveling at high speeds.

"Thanks for the 'help,' jackass!" Amber yelled at no one in particular as she quickly inspected her Onager for damage. Fortunately the armor had managed to hold strong and Amber quickly rotated her turret around, searching for a new target. She spotted a trio of Seraphs that had been assigned to her pulling out from a dive and she quickly open fired on them, firing two rounds in rapid succession before switching back to full power and firing a third shot.

The first two rounds somehow managed to hit the lead Seraph but as they had only been fired at one fifth full power, all they did was cause the Seraph's shields to lit up, as well as cause all three fighters to take immediate evasive actions. As a result, Amber's third round completely missed, but luckily for her, a Phantom gunboat just happen to be flying by at the exact same time, firing at a target Amber couldn't see.

Amber's third round slammed into the side of the Phantom, blowing off both its starboard side plasma turrets and ripping a massive hole in its hull. Fire erupted from the breach and Amber was pretty sure she saw at least one of the Phantom's gunners get ejected from the ship. The Phantom immediately broke contact and began to peel away from the station.

Sensing an opportunity, Amber decided to abandon the three Seraphs for now and brought her turret around. She began blasting away at the Phantom instead, blow the Phantom's engines into a thousand pieces with a single shot and leaving it dead in the water. She was just charging up her gun for the final kill shot when the Phantom was struck by an Onager round from another turret, blowing it to kingdom come.

Undeterred, Amber swiveled around to search for another one of her assigned targets, which wasn't as easy as it sounded. The problem wasn't finding a target, as there were so many Amber could have literary fired blindly downrange and probably hit something, the problem was determining which target was a priority.

She spotted a Seraph trailing smoke, speeding away from the station and back towards deep space and Amber rotated around so she could finish it off, but then spotted two Seraphs diving towards the station firing their plasma cannons. All three were assigned targets, but deciding the new Seraphs were more of an immediately threat compared to one damaged Seraph, Amber abandoned her initial target and panned around to deal with the new threat.

Both Seraphs were already taking fire from other turrets along the station, so Amber aimed at the Seraph on the left which didn't seem to be taking as much fire and opened up. Her first round missed entirely as both Seraphs were evading, and Amber found they were moving too fast for her to acquire a proper lock so she switched back to single capacitor and began unloading on the aircraft as fast as she possibly could in order to increase probability of hits. White streaks from other angles indicated other turrets had the same idea and soon the shields on both Seraphs were lighting up as they quickly began taking hits.

Abruptly one of the articulating tails on the Seraph Amber was shooting at was blown off as it was struck by a low powered Onager round, causing severe damage and sending the Seraph veering off course and off towards deep space. Amber let him go, figuring the vehicle would shake itself apart soon enough, and turned to shoot at the second Seraph. But just as she started rotating her turret around, the wounded Seraph abruptly turned around and started to dive towards the station at high speeds. Amber felt her eyes widen as she realized what the pilot was about to do.

"Oh shit!" Amber yelped, swiveling her turret to take out the Seraph before he could finish his suicide run. "Incoming, incoming, incoming!"

Charging up to full power, Amber fired a round straight at the Seraph but unfortunately she had been just a bit too hasty and completely missed. The shoot did have the unfortunate side effect of attracting the Seraph's attention as the pilot immediately turned his fighter as best he could and started speeding straight towards Amber's turret.

"Ah crap," Amber spat out. Switching back down to low power, Amber opened up, putting rounds downrange as fast as she could, but the Seraph was approaching from an angle which made it really hard for her to hit him, and the best she could do was hit him with glancing blows which wasn't enough to deter him. Amber felt her stomach drop as she realized even if she were to get a good solid hit on the Seraph, at the speed it was traveling, the remains would still be enough to seriously damage if not outright destroy her turret. Reflexively, she reached for her gun shield even though in her heart she knew the shield wouldn't be able to close in time.

 _ **BRRRRTTTTKABOOM!**_

An explosion ripped through the Seraph's hull as it was unexpectedly struck by a combination of 50mil autocannon fire and Argent missiles from a nearby Rampart turret. The explosion sent the Seraph spiraling right into the station a few dozen meters shorts of Amber's turret where it hit the armor and exploded with enough force Amber swore she could actually feel the vibrations. The explosion threw debris in all directions, and Amber jumped in surprise when something unexpectedly struck her backup sights. She turned to see what it was.

" _Fuck!_ " Amber screamed, reflexively jerking away in her seat as she realize what had hit her sights: it was the upper half of an Elite's body, probably the pilot of the Seraph which had somehow managed to survive the explosion mostly intact. The body just floated there, its mouth hanging slightly open, surrounding by frozen globules of blood, with its dead eyes staring straight at Amber. "Fuck. FUCK! GET IT OFF!"

" _Turret Eight, what the fuck is your problem?"_

Amber grabbed her radio. She must have accidentally hit the talk button when she was in the midst of freaking out.

"There's a fucking body on my backup sights!" she reported, warily eyeing the body as it just floated there.

 _"Reverse the magnetic polarity of your gun sight to clear it. And Eight, next time you start crying, keep it off the damn radio,"_ McCreary snapped and before Amber could retorted, he yelled, _"As for everyone else, pick up your rate of fire! We got too many damn fighters breaking through!"_

Amber casted around her turret before finding the button that would allow her to clear her sights. She jabbed it and watched as the body was repelled away until it was far away enough it was no longer blocking her optics. The sight of the dead body floating there still disturbed her greatly though, so she spun her turret, trying to hit the body with the barrel of her Onager in the hopes of shoving it out of the way. That turned out to be the wrong decision as instead of pushing it away, all it did was cause the body to burst, spewing frozen blood and intestines all over the place.

"God dammit," Amber muttered to herself, feeling sickened by the sight. There was nothing she could do about it now though, so she quickly turned her focus back to the battle. Immediately, she spotted a Banshee firing a fuel rod cannon at another turret and grateful for the distraction, she quickly opened up on it. She hit the Banshee's portside gravity pod with a snap shot, throwing the Banshee into a spin while simultaneously cause it to burst into flames. The Banshee flew through the space for a few dozen meters before colliding with the blown up wreak of a Vampire fighter, causing it to finally explode.

Taking pains to avoid looking at her backup sights for now, Amber glanced at her HUD for another fighter to shoot, only to see all the targets that had originally been assigned to her by McCreary had disappeared, and new targets were being assigned.

 _"All Delta turrets, listen up!"_ McCreary commanded over the radio as Amber's HUD finished updating. _"We're getting new targets: Central Fire Control is picking up the signatures of multiple fighter squadrons vectoring in to begin bombing runs on Byzas Station. We can't let them get away with that because if that station falls, we all fall. Shift fire to the following navpoint, I'm picking up an incoming flight of bombers. Take them out!"_

A navpoint suddenly appeared on Amber's HUD and she immediately swiveled her turret in that direction. As she did, she finally started paying attention to what was going on with the rest of the battle outside her personal field of view.

The entire area was ablaze with anti-aircraft fire as every single station in the entire defensive line was under heavy attack. Covenant fighters were everywhere, firing their weapons, deftly maneuvering between the various defensive platforms and occasionally diving in and out to launch attack runs. UNSC forces were fighting back with every single weapon at their disposal doing their best to hold back the tide, and doing a credible job as attested by the growing debris field of destroyed Covenant spacecraft. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to completely stop the Covenant from launching one attack run after another, and more and more stations were beginning to go dark; in the distance, Amber could see one support station just simply come apart as it took concentrated fire from multiple squadrons.

At the center of everything was Byzas Station. As the largest and most deadly of all defense stations, Byzas Station was the focus of the Covenant attack and taking most of the fire. They was responding in kind, returning fire with every weapon system they had including their super MAC, but due to the need to maintain room for the super MAC's firing and recoil mechanisms, Byzas Station wasn't armed with much more than Rampart turrets and Argent V missile batteries, of which weren't capable of taking out heavily armored aircraft like Seraphs or Phantoms by themselves. Said aircraft were attacking the station with impunity, causing heavy damage. Fire was raging across several sections and there were a number of hull breaches already. All in all, it wasn't looking good.

Rotating around, Amber looked for the Seraphs McCreary had warned them about and spotted four Seraphs approaching Byzas Station from below with their bomb bay doors just beginning to open.

" _All turrets, focus fire!"_ McCreary ordered. _"Don't let them drop a single bomb!"_

Charging up to full power, Amber planted her crosshairs over the lead vehicle and fired. She watched as the round streak across the void towards the target –

\- and then stared in astonishment as the round punch through the Seraph's shields and fly right into the Seraph's open bomb bay. The impact not only set off the Seraph's entire payload of plasma charges, completely destroying the spacecraft, but the ensuing explosion was so large it actually consumed the second Seraph in the line, causing serious damage. The second Seraph quickly lost control, veering off course and flying straight into a nearby Phantom, the collision destroying both vehicles. Seeing the damage done to the lead vehicles, the remaining two Seraphs immediately broke contact, peeling away from their attack run and disappearing among the chaos.

" _Damn,"_ McCreary commented over the radio, sounding astonished. _"Good shot Eight."_

Amber couldn't help but grin to herself as another navpoint appeared on her HUD.

" _Good work guys,"_ McCreary complimented. _"Now let's see if you can do it again. I'm picking up a flight of gunboats bearing down on Byzas Station from above. Take them out!"_

Amber quickly moved to obey, spotting the six Phantoms in question. Already, the Phantoms were exchanging fire with a couple of Rampart turrets on Byzas Station but it was a one sided battle: armed with heavy plasma cannons, the gunboats made short work of the lightly armored turrets. The Phantoms then turned their weapons against the station itself, tearing chunks of armor off with every shot.

Switching over to half power, Amber opened up on the ships. Knowing there was no way she could repeat her performance from earlier, rather than focus on just one of the Phantoms, Amber instead methodically worked her way down the line, planting a shot into each of the Phantoms, trusting the turrets in her section would come up behind her and finish the ships off. As soon as she was done, Amber rotated back to the lead vehicle to see if she need to lend her fire to something else.

The first Phantom was already gone, probably having been destroyed by one of her fellow gunners. The second was venting atmosphere from a breach in its hull, though it was still firing its weapons. Amber was about to finish it off when it was struck by a series of Argent missiles fired from Byzas Station, causing it to detonate. The remaining four, however, had immediately taken evasion actions the moment their shields had been struck, so Amber swiveled her turret around so she could help her section hunt down the remaining few.

She spotted one of the Phantoms a few dozen meters away, trailing smoke from a hole in its hull, flying along the surface of Byzas Station. Given its proximity to the station, Amber was a bit reluctant to engage because if she were to miss the Phantom with any of her shots, they would definitely hit the station and could potentially cause some serious damage, thus doing the work for the Covenant.

Unfortunately she couldn't just let the Phantom go as it was still taking an active part of the battle, firing its plasma cannons pretty much at point blank range at the station. She supposed she could fire her Onager at low power, so that any missed shots from her would simply bounce off Byzas Station's hull instead of punching a hole right through the armor, but while gunboats weren't as heavily armored as Seraphs, they were more heavily armored when compared to Banshees meaning it would take more than one hit to destroy the Phantom. The problem was, Amber knew she wasn't capable of that sort of accuracy. She needed some way to force the Phantom away from the station, which meant she needed some way to curve her shot, but an Onager just wasn't capable of that. Lance missiles however...

Highlighting the Phantom in question on her HUD, Amber tapped her radio.

"Fire Control, Eight here. I got a priority Phantom in sector niner niner seven three that I can't hit because it's too close to Byzas Station," she told McCreary. "Any chance you can get one of the Lance turrets to engage?"

 _"Yeah yeah, working on it,"_ McCreary distractedly said. _"Hang on… okay... done. Engage!"_

Outside, Amber watched as the Lance pod nearest to her emerge from the station and rapidly fire four missiles. Spinning around in her chair, Amber tracked the four missiles as they sped towards the Phantom.

The Phantom obviously saw the missiles coming and started to take steps to evade them, firing off a couple of decoys. But the Phantom quickly found its close proximity to Byzas Station working against them as their decoys actually _bounced off_ the station's hull and back towards them, making them an even bigger target than before.

To the Covies credit, they didn't panic, and instead opened up on the missiles with their starboard side plasma turrets, destroying two outright. But they weren't able to shoot down the remaining two and the Phantom quickly found itself hemmed in between the incoming missiles and Byzas Station. There was only one solution for the pilot: he ignited his main thrusters, launching forward and away from the station –

\- and right into Amber's crosshairs.

"Got you..." Amber announced out loud in a singsongy and squeezed the trigger.

Her round shot across the void and slammed into the midsection of the Phantom. At full power, the round shattered the Phantom's shields, punched its way into the hull, and clear out the other side. The gunboat immediately started to split in two but before the two halves could fully separate, the remaining two Lance missiles rammed home, and the entire vehicle blew up.

Amber let out a triumphant laugh, throwing a glance at the Lance turret that had helped her.

"Thank you!" she called out, jerking her turret from side to side in a sort of awkward wave, and was delighted to see the Lance turret returning the gesture.

Smiling to herself, Amber started to turn away to search for something else to shoot at, when the Lance turret simply blew up.

"Ah shit!" Amber yelped as her turret was pelted with debris.

She swung her turret around in time to see two Banshees emerging from the explosion, two green capsules departing from their beneath their fighters and rapidly speeding towards Amber. The words "INCOMING MISSILE" flashed across her screen again and Amber hastily punched the button for her gun shield, which closed just in time to block the fuel rod cannon shots.

Through her backup sights, Amber could see the two Banshees rocketing passed her turret, but she ignored them to look in the direction of where the Lance turret had once stood. Atmosphere was being vented from the hole in the stations hull, and a number of objects were being ejected into space. Amber didn't want to zoom in because she was afraid she was right, but she was pretty sure at least one of those objects was a human body. She felt a sinking sensation in her stomach as it occurred to her that might have been the turret Poolsie had been manning and suddenly, all the triumph she'd been feeling was gone, and all her fears and anxieties from before this engagement began was back with a vengeance.

Amber suddenly felt extremely stressed out, and she didn't know whether she wanted to cry or scream or yell, but all she did know she was struck with an unexpected need to see Poolsie _right now_ , to hug her and confirm, at least to herself, that her best friend was alright. But she knew that wasn't going to be possible right now, especially while this battle continued to rage, and Amber felt a surge of anger at the injustice of it all.

"SON OF A BITCH!" Amber yelled, punching her controls as hard as she could in a fit of anger. "Fucking Covenant!"

Extending her turret, Amber swiveled around, looking for something to vent her anger on. But then she heard a small robotic voice announce over her radio:

 _"Slipspace rupture detected."_

 _"What the... oh shit! All gunners, new contact, high tonnage!"_

Amber jerked her head up to see a number of Covenant warships reemerging from slipspace several hundred thousand kilometers away. Clearly the Covenant had decided Byzas Station was sufficiently damaged enough to risk sending in their warships again. The newly arrived warships promptly opened up, sending plasma fire in all directions.

 _"All Delta gunners, new target!"_ McCreary yelled over the radio, and Amber's HUD shifted to highlight a single target, a Covenant corvette that had already been designated as target '12-Bravo.' _"Shift fire and engage! Now!"_

Seized by a new sense of urgency, Amber shoved her feelings aside, bringing her turret around and aiming it directly at the Corvette. From this distance, even when she zoomed out, the warship looked massive, and she started to wonder if her puny turret would even be capable of damaging that thing. She started scanning the corvette for a weakness, something that would help amplify the damage output of her turret. By the looks of it, the corvette had already seen some action against UNSC forces as its hull was pitted and scored in a pattern consistent with Archer and Rapier missiles impacts, but against from that, there didn't seem to be any significant hull breaches or damaged armor Amber could hit. The only thing that was exposed were the corvette's heavy plasma cannons, but Amber was pretty sure she wouldn't be able to take them on by herself.

"Turret Five, this is Eight," Amber yelled into her radio. "We got to take out that corvette's guns before it can take out our station! Let's focus fire on those portside heavy plasma cannons! You with me?"

 _"Yeah, I'm with you!"_ came the reply, and Amber could see white streaks indicating Onager rounds being fired hitting the area where the guns were.

Charging up to full power, Amber opened up on the corvette. The results were rather disappointing. While the corvette may have seen action already, whatever damage it might or might not have taken clearly had already been repaired as the corvette's shields were all full strength. While her shots weren't completely useless, as Amber could see the shield fluctuating ever so slightly with which impact, for the most part, they weren't doing much.

"We're not going to be able to penetrate that shield," Amber finally declared as the corvette open fired on a nearby defense platform, destroying it with a single volley.

 _"Keep shooting. We might be able to get through eventually,"_ Five suggested and, seeing no other options, Amber agreed. Charging up to full power again, she fired.

 _ **BOOM!**_

Amber jumped as a MAC round smashed into the corvette, causing its entire shield to light up. Knowing there was no way she could have accomplished that with her little Onager, Amber glanced at her HUD to see a number of friendly contacts rising up from behind her. Swiveling her backup sights around, Amber watched as a _Paris_ -class UNSC frigate advance on target 12-Bravo, firing its weapons as it did.

 _"JTF Byzas is moving up to support,"_ McCreary reported over the radio, even as the corvette's shields failed and the corvette began taking hits. _"All turrets, continue firing!"_

Seeing the opportunity to finally be able to do some damage, Amber opened up on the unshielded corvette. Explosions rippled across the corvette's hull as her rounds hit home, and Amber could see one of the heavy plasma cannons explode in a blue flash. Shifting fire, Amber started shooting at what looked like a hanger bay door, hoping to catch whatever ships that might still be in dock off guard.

In the corner of her screen, Amber could see the super MAC on Byzas Station open fire, shredding a Covenant destroyer with a single shot. No longer being harassed by enemy fighters, Byzas Station was free to engage the Covenant warships with -

Amber froze as a thought suddenly occurred to her: where did all the fighters go?

Abandoning the corvette for the moment, Amber spun her turret around, looking for the swarm of Covenant fighters that had been attacking them not even five minutes ago. They were all gone, and Amber knew they couldn't have returned to their motherships as she would have seen them. She stared at her HUD, a sense of impending doom descending upon her, as she began frantically searching for where all the fighters went. She felt her blood run cold when she spotted them in the distance behind the defensive line.

"Fire Control, this is Eight," Amber desperately yelled into her radio. "Be advised, I got eyes on enemy fighters pushing through our defensive line and heading straight towards Actium!"

 _"What? How?"_

"The fleet must have pushed up all their ships to join us on the line, and didn't leave anyone behind to intercept anything that might have gotten through," Amber thought out loud. "Fighters must have saw the opportunity to push through!"

" _But why? The battle is up here!"_

Amber quickly thought it over. While fighters were capable of causing large amounts of havoc, they weren't capable of glassing a planet by themselves. To do that, the Covenant need their warships. But in order to get their warships down to Actium, they had to take out Byzas Station. And Byzas Station was too heavily armored and too heavily support, even though that support had been degraded somewhat, to take out from a distance. Now the only way the Covenant had to take out the station was to destroy the station's ground based generator.

"Fire Control, those fighters have got to be headed straight for Byzas Station's power generator," Amber warned. "Who's standing between Actium and the fighters?"

 _"Ground installations! And that's it! God dammit!"_

"McCreary, you need to get on the horn and have someone warn the Army that they've got a shit ton of contacts headed their way," Amber urged. "Cause –"

" _Fire Control, turret Seven! We've got boarding craft coming straight for us! Eight, LOOKOUT!"_

A loud shrill filled her ears and Amber reflexively glanced at her screen in time to see the words "COLLUSION ALERT" flashing across her screen, as well as a Covenant boarding pod flying straight at her. There was no time for her to activate her gun shield. All Amber could do was throw her arms in front of her face –

\- and then everything went dark.

* * *

According to Halopedia, the Halo universe has a massive amounts of named missiles in their inventory, but unfortunately the details regarding the differences in their sizes and roles are somewhat lacking. For the sole purpose of trying to maintain some continuity in my story, I had made myself a little chart kind of defining what each missile's role was, which I will attempt to replicate here. Unfortunately, I don't think graphs will be shown on fanfiction, so what I have is three columns: the first is the cannon missile or launch system, the second will be what I considered its real-world equivalent to be, and the last with be just a short description of their role.

Note, of course this is all my interpretation, and it's very possible it's all wrong. I also don't have all the known missiles in the Halo universe, simply because some of them won't get used until after the war ends, and some I just don't plan on using.

(Hopefully this will end up looking right on FF.)

In no particular order:

Halo Missile Real-World Equivalent Role

\- Scorpion missile AGM-65 "Maverick" Air to ground anti-armor missile

\- Anvil II missiles Hydra 70 rockets Unguided air to surface rocket

-Anvil IV missiles Zuni rockets Unguided air to surface rocket

\- ST/Medusa AIM-120 "AIMRAAM" Medium range air-to-air missile

\- ASGM-10 missile AGM-84 missile Air launched anti-ship missile

\- Anaconda missiles (replaced by Argent V missiles)

\- Argent V missiles ADATS missiles dual-purpose anti-air/anti-armor missile

\- ASRGAM 10X missile* Harpoon missile multirole anti-ship missile  
* used in the launcher labels on Halopedia as the "Unidentified SAM launcher

\- Ares missile (replaced by Archer missiles)

\- Archer missile **P-800 "Oniks"** Medium range anti-ship missile

\- Howler missile **P-500 "Bazalt"** Extended range anti-ship missile

\- Rapier missile **BrahMos-II** Long range anti-ship missile

\- M95 "Lance" turret RIM-7 "Sea Sparrow" Medium range anti-ship missile

\- M41 SPNKR FGM-148 "Javelin" Dual-purpose anti-armor/anti-air

 **(*Edit 7/26/19: I completely misunderstood the roles of some of the missiles I had initially written here. Many thanks to** **Thorthemighty321** **for pointing that out, as well as providing me with some better and more appropriate alternatives.)**


	10. Chapter 10

Darkfire7881: Thanks for the review! That's actually part of the reason why I started writing fanfiction; like you, I was interested in seeing a Halo game from the perspective of just a regular, squishy, non-enhanced human, just trying to survive the war. I initially came to this section, thinking the fandom would be able to fill that void, but unfortunately there weren't a whole lot of stories that matched what I was looking for, so I decided to go ahead and write my own.

Also, thanks for the advice. I always trying to give my chapters a read-through before I post them, but like you said, it can be difficult to catch all the mistakes. If you, or anyone else of that matter, happen to notice any, feel free to point them out and I'll correct them as soon as possible. Thanks!

* * *

 **Chapter 10**

 **Gaithersville, Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0946**

 **Tariq**

 _"All military call signs in the vicinity of orbital defense generator echo, one, zero, niner, be advised enemy aircraft detected in bound, four minutes. I say again, enemy aircraft inbound in the vicinity of orbital defense generator echo, one, zero, niner…"_

Tariq was a ball of frantic energy. With Noble busy trying to give Corona accurate directions to their destination, Tariq had in effect become the backup radio operator, monitoring the net for any relevant communicates and what not. But now with enemy aircraft potentially moving in, Tariq was not only doing that, but also prepping all weapon systems for an air attack, watching his sights and periscopes for visual contact of the inbound, repurposing his acoustic locator to help with detection of said inbound, as well as maintaining contact with their attached platoon of self-propelled anti-aircraft guns because they were the only ones in the column who had their own vehicle mounted radar systems. With so many things to keep track of, Tariq barely had time to breath, much less think.

"GUNNER, ANYTHING?" Noble yelled at him through the open hatch. Noble was riding with the top half of her body sticking out of the crew hatch for better visibility against the coming fighters, but the downside was at the speeds they were moving at, it was kind of hard to hear her, even with their intercom system.

"Negative First Sergeant! Scopes are clear!"

"WHAT?"

"NEGATIVE! I GOT NOTHING!"

"THERE'S NOTHING OUT HERE EITHER!" Noble reported back. "DRIVER, TAKE THIS NEXT RIGHT!"

Tariq threw his arms out to brace himself when Corona reflexively and suddenly took a right turn, only, he took it about fifteen meters short of the _actual_ turn and instead, bumped into a civilian box truck parked there, putting a sizable dent in its side. Corona immediately realized his mistake and tried to jerk back onto the road, but Lillian wasn't exactly a car where only the front wheels could turn, so instead of curving back to the road, the tank abruptly stopped as it sort of spun around in the same spot.

"Sorry sorry sorry," Corona hastily said.

"Jesus _fucking_ Christ kid!" Tariq immediately yelled. "Are you trying to throw the fucking track again!? Because that's how you get a thrown track!"

"Sergeant Helmand, shut the fuck up," Noble ordered as she ducked her head back inside. "Private Corona, I need you to calm the fuck down and pay attention to what's going on around you. I know you're nervous, but it doesn't do anybody any good if you flip the damn tank before the fighting even begins."

"Sorry First Sergeant," Corona breathlessly said.

"Don't be sorry, just do it," Noble bluntly ordered. "Take a deep breath and let it out slowly. You good?"

Corona didn't look too good to Tariq, but he bobbed his head nonetheless.

"Good. Now, focus. Get us back on the road and in fifteen meters, _that's_ when you'll take a right."

"Understood First Sergeant."

"Good. Driver, get us moving again."

"Yes First Sergeant," Corona breath before throwing the tank in gear and easing back onto the road.

 _"06 Actual to 07. What is the hold up,_ this time! _?"_

Tariq snarled and grabbed a hold of his talk button but before he could depress it, Noble grabbed his hand.

"I'll deal with Captain Lightfoot, Sergeant," she said, throwing him a warning look. "Get back to your station and keep an eye out for hostiles."

Tariq nodded and turned back to his monitors as Noble lifted herself out of the hatch. He was glad Noble was finally deciding to deal with their company commander as Captain Lightfoot was seriously beginning to piss him off with his incessant need to ask them for their ETA every five fucking seconds.

Due to the heavy amount of civilian traffic that had been severely hindering their progress, the battalion commander had given them permission to pull off the highway and onto the side roads to explore alternative routes to the power generator in the hopes there would be less of a gridlock. This turned out to be the right move as there was significantly less traffic on the side roads, but unfortunately while the highway would have taken them directly to the power generator, no such side road existed, forcing the entire convoy to take a rather circular route to their destination. That in turn was adding more travel time to their itinerary, which was apparently causing Lightfoot to stress out.

In some ways, Tariq couldn't blame Lightfoot for freaking out. The column was already twenty to thirty minutes behind schedule due to the damn traffic and with Covenant aircraft potentially inbound, if the battalion didn't reach the power generator soon, not only would the generators be extremely vulnerable, Tariq and the others would be caught out in the open in the middle of a Covenant air attack. And in Tariq's opinion, there was nothing worse than being stuck in an armored vehicle while being attacked by enemy aircraft.

That being said, Tariq didn't understand why Lightfoot was getting pissy at him. It's not like _Tariq_ was capable of speeding things up.

The good news though, was at least they were getting close to the generators. Through his magnified optics, Tariq could see ODG Facility E-109 in the distance, sticking out from the side of the mountain and looming over the small town they were traveling through.

"Sergeant, what's the call sign to our SPAAG support again?" Noble called out.

"It's Bowman 2-3 First Sergeant," Tariq yelled back.

"Copy that," Noble said, and then Tariq heard her click on her radio.

"Bowman 2-3, Cataphract-07 Actual," he heard her say over the radio. "Give me a sitrep on our incoming, over."

" _Cataphract-07, this is Bowman 2-3, we're picking up negative contacts on our radar. We're not… wait a minute, we just got a hit. It's… oh shit CONTACT! Enemy bandits at altitude forty-five thousand meters and descending fast! Direction, two fifty degrees, west-southwest at our eleven o'clock! I tally seven, no, eight dozen bandits!"_

Tariq's head snapped up and he immediately turned his gunner's sights in that direction. Sure enough, he spotted dozens and dozens of spacecraft descending from the sky, their hulls wreathed in flames from the friction of their rapid descent. Seconds later through his acoustic locator, he heard the roar of their sonic booms, followed by the screaming of their engines.

"Shit... TC, Gunner has got eyes on enemy contacts!" Tariq announced.

"SAME HERE!" Noble yelled back and Tariq glanced over his shoulder to see her ducking her head back in, a pair of high powered binoculars in her hands. "Looks like they're headed straight for the ODG!"

"How far out are we Top?"

"We're still about seven mikes out!"

 _"07, 06 Actual, what's the ETA to the ODG, over?"_

"We're still about seven mikes away sir, over," Noble reported over the radio.

 _"07, I don't care how you do it, get us to that station faster!"_

"Copy that 06. Out."

Noble dropped her radio and glanced at the rest of her crew. "Alright guys, listen up. Driver, keep going straight until I tell you otherwise. I'm going to check the map for a faster route, but we might ultimately have to off-road this bitch. Gunner, maintain observation on enemy bandits and keep me posted on the situation. Go."

"Yes First Sergeant!"

Tariq jammed his face back on his sights as he felt the tank pick up speed. In the distance, the Covenant fighters were spreading out, breaking into individual platoons as they prepped to begin their attack on the ODG. In the meantime, Tariq could see the contrails from about a dozen missiles as they rose from the ground to meet the coming threat, and he quickly realized the ODG had open fired.

"Top, the ODG has just open fired on the Covenant," Tariq reported, watching as the missiles streak towards the nearest enemy fighters. Then he saw a series of green streaks and realized the Covenant had just returned fire. "Covies are beginning their attack!"

The sky above the ODG lit up with explosions as the battle began in earnest. Orange flashes followed by blue fireballs indicated hits on Covenant ships while blue and green streaks indicating Covenant return fire filled the skies. Through his acoustic locator, Tariq could begin to hear the _boom_ of individual explosions, along with the _fwoozfwooz_ of plasma cannon fire. Underneath it all, Tariq could also hear the infamous screeching of Banshee interceptors, and the noise cause shivers to go down Tariq's spine as he was suddenly transported back to Draco III, and the heavy fighting that had occurred there only a few months ago.

"Got it!" Noble triumphantly announced, snapping Tariq out of his reverie. "Alternative route. We're going to go off-road at some point, so everyone make sure you're strapped in because it's going to get bumpy."

Tariq nodded in acknowledgement as he grabbed his crash restraints and made sure they were tight. At the same time, behind him, Tariq could hear Noble repeating everything she had just told him over the radio to the rest of the battalion, as well as the actual route they were going to take.

 _"Fine 07,"_ Lightfoot immediately said once Noble had finished. _"Whatever we do, make it fast! We're already getting flooded with calls for help from the Marines at that ODG!"_

Tariq glanced through his sights. The skies over the ODG were a frenzy of activity: Covenant fighters diving in and out, missiles, tracers, plasma bombs, lasers, and so many explosions, if Tariq didn't know better, he would have thought the base was celebrating U-day a few months early.

"GUNNER!" Noble snapped, catching Tariq's attention. "Any chance we could support those Marines from here?"

Tariq seized the controls for his range finder and pointed the laser in the general direction of the fighting.

"Negative First Sergeant!" he bellowed. "Maybe the SPAAGS could engage with their Argents, but we are way way out of range!"

"Alright, let me get a hold of them and see what they can do!"

Noble grabbed her radio and Tariq glanced at his range finder again, only to notice the distance between them and the fighting was rapidly decreasing, far faster than their current speed would suggest it should. Bewildered, Tariq smacked his control panel in case it was malfunctioning due to the cold and when that didn't fix it, he glanced through his optics, only to feel his blood run cold.

"FIRST SERGEANT! WE GOT INCOMING!" Tariq bellowed

Simultaneously, over the radio, he could hear Bowman yelling, _"All victors, all victors, be advised, we're picking up signatures of two dozen Banshees breaking away from the fighting and heading straight towards us! Time to contact, ONE MIKE! INCOMING!"_

Outside, Tariq could hear the shrieking of Banshee engines growing louder and louder as they got closer to firing range. At the same time, the haunting wail of an air raid siren began to go off as civilian authorities finally picked up on the approaching fighters and what few civilians that were still outside, Tariq could see then dashing for the relative safety indoors could provide.

"Sergeant Helmand, how soon until those Banshees come within range of our guns?" Noble asked and Tariq ran some quick mental calculations.

"Maybe another two minutes with beam riders, another five minutes with other munitions, and probably another ten minutes with the RWS!" Tariq decided.

"And how soon before _**we**_ get in range of those Banshees?"

"I don't know, maybe thirty seconds or less?" Tariq suggested. "The problem is, our munitions have to fight against gravity to climb to their altitude, limiting their range! The Banshees don't!"

"FIRST SERGEANT! THE BANSHEES ARE FIRING!" Corona suddenly bellowed and Tariq glanced through his optics, only to feel his eyes widen as the entire line of Banshees suddenly opened up with their fuel rod cannons, sending over two dozen radioactive green projectiles in their direction.

"INCOMING FUEL RODS, TWELVE O'CLOCK!" Tariq screamed.

"DRIVER, STANDBY TO BREAK LEFT ON MY MARK!" Noble barked out as the fuel rods streaked towards them. "GUNNER, DEPLOY SMOKE SCREEN!"

Tariq hastily reached out and punched a series of buttons. Outside, a number of canisters were ejected from the smoke dispensers on either side of Lillian's turret and tossed a couple of meters into the air where they promptly exploded, quickly surrounding the tank with black smoke.

"DRIVER, BREAK LEFT!" Noble roared and Corona immediately jerked the tank to the left, pulling to a stop behind a delivery truck sitting abandoned in the middle of the road.

Immediately the fuel rods came screaming in, causing the entire ground to shake as they began exploding all around them. Outside, Tariq could hear the fuel rods slamming into the road and the buildings surrounding them, and Lillian shook as she was pelted by all sorts of shrapnel and debris. Their smoke screen prevented the fuel rod cannons from obtaining a lock on them, but the Banshees had fired so many of them, inevitably some of them ended up heading straight towards the tank. Fortunately they hit the delivery truck instead, turning the entire vehicle into one giant fireball, but leaving Lillian no worse for wear.

"Fuck!" Noble yelled as the barrage subsided. "Driver, gets us moving again! Gunner, can we return fire yet?"

Tariq checked his range finder as Corona accelerated. There was a scrapping noise as Corona drove over the flaming wreak that had been the delivery truck not even thirty seconds before.

"Negative First Sergeant!" Tariq reported. "Maybe Bowman can but we're still out of range!"

"Alright, copy that! Cataphract-07 to Bowman, do you guys have a shot on those Banshees, over?"

 _"Negative 07, we're still about thirty seconds away before we reach our max engagement envelope!"_

"So we have no way of discouraging those Banshees from engaging us?" Noble snarled.

"No, we got to get closer!" Tariq yelled back.

"Shit. Okay, Driver keep accelerating forward! Close the distance!"

"INCOMING!" Tariq warned as the Banshees fired again and another salvo of fuel rod cannons came streaking towards them once more.

"Gunner, standby to engage smoke! Driver, on my mark, break right and get behind that building!"

"Affirmative!" Corona yelled back while Tariq merely placed his hands over the controls for the smoke dispensers to show he was ready.

Lillian continued to barrel down the street and Tariq found himself nervously swallowing as the fuel rods streaked closer and closer.

"MARK!"

Tariq punched the buttons and almost instantly another black cloud formed around them. At the same time, he could feel Lillian lurching to the right as Corona turned but before she could get far -

 _ **CLANG!**_

Something hit Lillian in the rear and instantly caused her to grind to a halt! Before Tariq could work out what the hell just happened, the fuel rods came streaking in, two of which slammed into Lillian's side.

 _ **BOOM!**_

The entire tank shook as the fuel rod cannons caused the explosive reactive tiles Lillian had mounted on her sides to detonate, which helped minimize, but not completely mitigate the damage. The smell of ozone and melted metal immediately began to filter through the tank.

"Shit. Shit!" Corona started cursing but Tariq ignored him as he panned his optics over the area to check the damage.

"Forget about that! Driver, get us moving again!" Noble demanded. "Gunner! Give me a sitrep!"

"Damage doesn't look too bad, but I don't think we'd want to take a hit like that again!" Tariq reported.

"I agree!"

At that, Tariq whirled on Corona. "Dude, what the fuck was that!?" he demanded to know, grabbing a nearby water bottle and chucking it at the back of Corona's head, only to miss. "You trying to get us all killed!?"

"Gunner, cut that shit out, it wasn't his fault," Noble snapped. "Fucking Cataphract 3-1 crashed into us! The entire column is too close together, we need to spread out! 06, this is 07."

 _"Go for 06!"_

"06, we are way too fucking close together," Noble snapped. "With the entire battalion streaming down this one road, all we're doing is presenting those Banshees with one massive target! We need to spread the fuck out, at least until they come within range of our weapons, over!"

 _"I agree 07,"_ Lightfoot replied. _"We need to spread out. Cataphract-05, take Cataphract 1 up the left, 06 will take Cataphract 2 up the right, and 07 take Cataphract 3 up the center!"_

"Wilco. 07 out!" Noble lowered her radio. "Alright Driver, you heard the man! Forward!"

"You know First Sergeant, by dispersing, Bowman is going to have one hell of a hard time keeping us covered," Tariq pointed.

"With the Covenant out of range, Bowman can barely keep us covered now," Noble snapped. "At least this way, if the Covenant take out the lead vehicle, the entire convoy won't get fucked. Plus, breaking up into small groups will hopefully force _them_ to break in to small groups also, making them easier to take out!"

"INCOMING!"

Without waiting for Noble, Corona jerked the tank to the side and Tariq watched as a fuel rod cannon shoot passed them and slam into the tank directly behind them, Cataphract 3-1. The rod exploded against the upper glacis plate, engulfing the entire vehicle in radioactive green flames.

Tariq let out a mute sigh of relief as 3-1 emerged from the fireball relatively unscathed, but the relief was short lived as he realized that while none of the UNSC forces had been destroyed yet, if the Banshees continued to fire unopposed like this, they would eventually be able to burn through even the thickest part of their tank's armor.

"Shit, this is getting old," Tariq snarled to himself as he checked his range finder, but as expected, the altitude the Banshees were flying at placed them out of range for all of his weapon systems. "Someone has got to be able to fire back by now! Come on Bowman! You guys have got to be in range by now!"

 _ **SWOOSHSWOOSHSWOOSH!**_

As if on cue, the roar of rockets getting launched filled the air, and Tariq swiveled his optics around in time to see a couple of Argent V anti-aircraft missiles departing from their tubes on either side of one of the SPAAGs from Bowman. The missiles started climbing, rapidly gaining altitude as they streaked towards the approaching Banshees.

The Banshees quickly detected the approach of the missiles and immediately deployed countermeasures, causing a small gray cloud to form beneath them. At once, the missiles veered away and started to go for the decoys, but before they could hit, the missiles unexpectedly all exploded, throwing shrapnel forward in an angular blast pattern and catching the Banshees completely by surprise.

 _ **KABOOMBOOMOOM!**_

The sound of the missiles blowing up overlapped with the sight of sparks flying from the hulls of the Banshees as they were peppered by the shrapnel. The shrapnel alone wasn't enough to outright destroy any of the Banshees, but against a lightly armored vehicle designed for speed and maneuverability and not survivability, it was enough to cause some serious damage to some of the Banshees. Before the Covenant could recover, Bowman quickly fired another salvo.

 _ **SWOOSHSWOOSHSWOOSH!**_

Another handful of missiles departed from their tubes and shot towards the Banshees. This time they were far more effective.

 _ **BOOM!**_

There was a blue flash and one of the Banshees immediately dropped out of formation, its entire cockpit covered in smoke. Tariq could see the Banshee wavering in mid-air as the pilot struggled to regain control of his damaged aircraft but before he could, there was another explosion as one of his anti-gravity pods spontaneously combusted, sending the Banshee spiraling towards the earth. Tariq watched the Banshee sped towards the ground, tracking it journey with his optics before it disappeared behind the buildings.

"Woohoo!" Corona cheered as seconds later, an explosion caused the buildings around them to rattle. "We got one!"

"Don't celebrate yet kid," Tariq snapped. "We're not out of the woods just yet."

The Banshees, seeing one of their own getting knocked out the sky, instantly shifted tactics. Breaking formation, they scattered into individual squads of three Banshees each to present a smaller target, and then immediately dove towards the ground to get within the minimum engagement range of the SPAAGs.

"Here they come!" Noble warned, even as Tariq watched the Banshees grow larger and larger in his optics, finally coming within range of Tariq's weapons. "Gunner, load up and standby to engage!"

Tariq quickly checked to make sure he had a missile loaded in both of his barrels, and then swiveled their targeting laser around and began locking onto the nearest Banshee. "Gun ready!"

"Fire!" Noble snapped.

"On the way!" Tariq warned before pulling the trigger.

Tariq could feel Lillian jerk as the right barrel on her main cannon recoiled, and a 120mm dual-purpose air-defense anti-tank missile spat out from the end of the gun. The missile was launched a few meters away from the tank before its onboard motor kicked in and it suddenly took off, zeroing in on the targeting laser.

As expected, the Banshee Tariq was targeting immediately saw the missile coming and quickly deployed countermeasures, filling the air with either chaff or flares, Tariq couldn't tell. But unlike the missiles that Bowman had fired, Tariq's missile wasn't locked onto the Banshee itself, but his targeting laser and thus wasn't fooled by the decoys.

The Banshee pilot must have realized this because at the very last second, he began evading but by then, it was far too late: the missile arched towards the Banshee, slammed into its canopy and into the cockpit itself, the hardened warhead of the missile easily punching through the Banshee's thin armor. Tariq could only imagine the look of panic on the Banshee pilot's face before the missile exploded.

"Target destroyed!" Noble yelled as Tariq watched through his optics as whatever was left of the flaming Banshee came crashing down to the ground. "Shift target!"

Tariq instantly reacted, switching over to one of the two remaining Banshees. The Banshees started evading, but they weren't able to avoid getting locked on by Tariq's laser. "Gun ready!"

"Fire!"

"On the way!"

Tariq pulled the trigger again and watched as another missile was launched from the end of Lillian's cannon, this time from the left barrel. The missile began speeding towards the lead Banshee but before it had even gotten halfway, a green glow quickly formed underneath the Banshee and he suddenly fired a fuel rod cannon straight at Tariq.

"Incoming, fuel rod cannon!" Tariq warned.

"Driver, break right!" Noble ordered and Corona immediately obeyed, jerking the tank to the right.

The fuel rod cannon curved towards them in compensation for their movements, and Tariq started to brace himself in anticipation of a hit, but abruptly the fuel rod cannon clipped the top of the nearby street light, causing it to prematurely detonate. The light pole came crashing down, landing right on top of Lillian as she sped by underneath, banging into Tariq's targeting laser with enough force to actually shift it to side.

"Shit!" Tariq yelped as he suddenly lost the lock on his target, and his missile veered off course and headed for whatever target in the distance his laser was now painting.

He grabbed the controls to his laser and tried to reacquire the Banshee, but by that point, the Banshee and the missile had already passed each other, and Tariq had to wait for the missile to curve back around. But in the process of doing so, the missile burned up most of its fuel and before it could even come close to the Banshee, its motor died, causing the warhead to immediately self-destruct.

"Fuck!" Tariq yelled as he frantically loaded up another two beam riders and tried to reacquire a lock on the retreating Banshees.

 _ **CLANG! CLANG!**_

The sound of heavy plasma cannon bolts striking Lillian's armor echoed through the tank. Tariq glanced behind him to see another trio of Banshees on approach, nearly leveled with the ground, hosing Lillian down with plasma fire. Tariq tried to swing his laser around, only to find he had lost control of the designator. It took him a few moments to realize it was because Noble had seized control of the device and was using it to lock onto a different target.

"Incoming Banshees, five o'clock, high!" she warned and Tariq whipped around to see a Banshee diving almost straight down towards them, his fuel rod cannon aimed straight at Lillian's vulnerable turret roof.

Realizing the new Banshee was a far more dangerous target, Tariq spun his turret around but found he couldn't elevate his barrels that high. But with the laser, it didn't really matter.

"On the way!" Tariq warned and then pulled the trigger, emptying both barrels.

A missile flew out from the end of both barrels and immediately curved straight up and shot in the direction of the Banshee, like they had the first time. But unlike before, instead of ineffectively deploying countermeasures or even evading, this Banshee threw himself into an aileron roll, spinning around mid-air on his axis. To Tariq's surprise, both of his missiles missed, shooting passed the Banshee with mere centimeters to spare.

"Missiles failed to connect!" Tariq screamed in alarm. "INCOMING!"

"What?" Noble demanded with a start. "Shit! Troops, fifty!"

 _RATATATATA!_

The sound of the heavy machine gun mounted in their remote weapons station mounted on the top of the turret roof flooded Tariq's ears and red-orange tracers filled the air as Noble started to unload on the Banshee, hoping to take it out before it could fire. Bullets pinged off the Banshee's hull but undeterred, Tariq could see a green glow beginning to form on the Banshee's underside. But then –

 _BOOMBOOMBOOM!_

One of Bowman's SPAAGs opened up. With two, dual-barreled 40mm auto-cannons, the SPAAG unloaded approximately fifty high explosive rounds in the time it took Tariq to blink. The very air around the Banshee exploded with miniature explosions. As one 40mm shell alone was enough to destroy a Banshee, fifty was enough to completely shred the vehicle. By the time the barrage ended, there wasn't anything left of the Banshee to fall to the ground.

"Good shot Bowman!" Tariq heard Noble say into the radio, but Tariq ignored it to search for another target.

All around him, missiles, tank shells, and machine gun tracers were skipping all over the place as every single vehicle in the battalion unloaded on the Banshees. For the most part, most of the ordnance failed to connect as the Banshees were moving just a bit too fast and evading just a bit too effectively for the tanks to track, but at the very least, all the firepower was preventing the Banshees from effectively shooting back. But that's not to say they weren't trying.

 _FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ! KABOOM!_

The road beside Lillian was chewed up by plasma fire and a near miss from a fuel rod cannon as two Banshees whipped by overhead, illuminated by a mass of tracers. Without thinking, Tariq helped add to the mess, firing a snapshot with whatever was loading in the cannon, which turned out to be a couple of beam riders. Without a laser to lock onto though, all they did was act like dumb munitions, flying passed both Banshees and blowing a large hole in a nearby building.

"First Sergeant!" Corona suddenly called out. "We're coming up to a T-junction! Which way do I turn?"

"Go straight," Noble instantly ordered.

"...what? But there's no way to go straight First Sergeant," Corona protested.

Tariq glanced through his periscopes and sure enough, on the other side of the road, there was just some traffic lights, a sidewalk, and then a large parking lot. Just beyond the parking lot, there was a large department store. Like Corona had pointed out, there didn't appear to be a way to go forward.

"At this point, the fastest way to the ODG is to go through the building. I told you guys it was going to get bumpy," Noble wryly noted upon seeing their surprised expressions. "Driver, keep moving forward!"

"...yes First Sergeant!" Corona bellowed after a moment of hesitation and stepped on it.

Tariq braced himself as Corona slammed into a bank of snow piled on the edge of the sidewalk, plowing right through it and knocking over the traffic signals at the same time. Cutting across the parking lot, Corona ran into two parked cars that happened to be sitting there, shoving them to the side, and headed straight for the store itself. Tariq glanced over his shoulder.

"First Sergeant, you really think that floor is going to be able to hold our weight?"

Noble shrugged. "Guess we're about to find out," she admitted.

Tariq cringed. "Hope no one is hiding behind that wall," he muttered to himself as the store loomed ahead.

As an afterthought, Tariq quickly spun the turret around so the main cannons were facing backwards, just so he wouldn't run the risk of damaging them.

 _ **CRASH!**_

Brick and sheet metal was sent flying in all directions as Lillian slammed into the side of the store at a little over seventy-five kilometers per hour, punching right through. Tariq jerked in his seat as the floor beneath the tank immediately crack and gave way, but fortunately the floor only collapsed a few centimeters before they hit the top of the concrete foundation, which held firm. Then Corona sent the tank lurching forward, smashing through the checkout area and sending wooden splinters and plastic chunks in all directions as the counters were crushed beneath Lillian's massive treads.

Quickly recovering, Tariq grabbed the controls to his optics and panned them around, reflexively checking the area for hostiles. There didn't appear to be anyone around, human or Covenant, and with them being indoors, they were temporarily out of the sight from the Banshees so Tariq allowed himself to relax long enough to enjoy the ride.

As the tank plowed through the building, and despite the seriousness of the situation, Tariq quickly found himself giggling like a little schoolgirl. He couldn't help it. As a little kid, Tariq had always like to pretend he was some sort of unstoppable juggernaut, just like from the comics. He had spent many a day at the doctor's office, with a banged up head after having run headlong into a wall in the hopes he could somehow run right through it like they always did in the TV shows, which was obviously impossible for a little kid. Part of the reason why Tariq had decided on become a tanker was because he had always wanted to know what it felt like, being completely invincible. On Draco III, he had gotten a taste, but since most of the fighting he had seen had taken place out in large open fields, he had never experienced what he was experiencing now.

Lillian sped forward, cutting a path of destruction through the center of the store. As the store wasn't exactly designed to withstand the full weight of an MBT, much less an entire battalion of them, there wasn't anything inside that was capable of stopping them or getting in their way. Whatever wasn't brush aside was unceremoniously crushed beneath Lillian's weight. Tariq let out a bark of laughter as Corona sideswiped an entire row of shelves, knocking them over and causing a domino effect through the entire building. Seconds later, Tariq had to resist the urge to applaud when they crashed headlong into an entire shelving unit, bring the entire structure crashing down on them. Chaos reigned as boxes and other store goods went crashing down to the ground.

The sound of all sorts of boxes, pallets, and shelving brackets crashing down on the tank however, did cause Tariq to snap out of reverie, and he grabbed his optics and swiveled them around to double check the integrity of the top of his tank. He wasn't so much concerned about the possibility of damage to the tank's armor, as he was about their machine guns and other equipment mounted on the outside of the vehicle. Fortunately, a quick glance showed that their mounts were made up of sturdier stuff than the shelves were, at least. Though the amount of crap that was getting stuck to their tank was a bit of concern for Tariq.

"Everything intact out there Sergeant?" Noble called out over the chaos as Tariq pulled back from his optics.

"So far!" he yelled back. "As long as nothing heavier than what's already fallen on top of us hits us, I think -"

 _ **KABOOM!**_

Tariq jerked as the ceiling ten meters in front of them exploded, causing a huge mass of concrete to start falling towards the floor.

"Look out!" Tariq reflexively bellowed in warning, but Corona had already seen it coming and quickly moved out of the way.

The mass hit the ground and shattered, throwing concrete shards in all directions. As Lillian sped past the hole, Tariq looked up in time to see two Banshees speeding past the building.

"What the hell was that!?" Corona yelled.

"Banshees! They've opened up on the building! I think they're either trying to hit us through the roof, or they're trying to collapse the building!" Tariq warned, even as another two holes were blown into the ceiling by fuel rod cannons.

"Gunner, can we shoot back?" Noble asked as Corona awkwardly dodge around the falling debris.

"Negative! I can't elevate the cannons that high!"

"Then just keep moving!"

"Copy!"

 _ **KABOOM!**_

Another explosion rocked the building as the Banshees blasted another hole into the ceiling, sending another mass of concrete crashing to the floor. It was pretty clear the Banshees had no idea where Lillian was as that explosion had taken place on the other side of the building, far from where the vehicle was actually passing through. But Tariq knew all the Banshees had to do was continue to pump fuel rod cannons into the building and through the process of elimination, they would eventually hit something. That was, assuming the building would even still be standing at that point.

 _ **BABOOM!**_

An explosion ripped through the roof directly above them, sending another giant slab of concrete falling to the ground. Tariq's arms snapped out to brace himself as Corona slammed on the brakes, bringing the tank to a screeching halt as the slab slammed into the ground directly in front of them.

"Holy shit," Tariq gasped as he eyeballed the slab. "That was close."

"Thanks," Corona breathlessly replied.

"I didn't say _you_ did a good job," Tariq snapped.

"Don't reply to that Private," Noble immediately barked. "Just getting us moving again!"

Corona bobbed his head and started to back up, only Cataphract 3-1 was sitting directly behind them. "First Sergeant, I'm hemmed in! I need 3-1 to back up first!"

"Dude, you're driving a fucking tank, not your mommy's fucking minivan!" Tariq snapped. "Just fucking floor it!"

Corona shrugged and then slammed on the accelerator. There was a grinding noise as Lillian slammed into the slab and started pushing it, but then her tracks caught onto the edge and they started climbing up the side. The slab and mound of crap sitting on top of it was only about a meter tall, but because it was mostly steel and concrete, it was sturdy enough to support Lilian's weight and she starting going straight up and over the pile instead of crushing it. As they climbed, Tariq found himself staring straight up at the hole in the roof above them just as a Banshee went whipping by and he reflexively fired both barrels.

At first, Tariq was sure he missed, but then about fifteen meters to their left, there was a loud explosion and the burning frame of a Banshee came crashing through the roof. Tariq grinned darkly to himself.

Lillian finished climbing over the slab and came sliding back to the ground. As soon as they were back on the floor, the tank took off, speeding off towards the back of the store.

Driving their way through a pile of hardwood lumber, they came across the rear wall to the building. This time Corona didn't even hesitate, pressing down on the accelerator and pushing right through at high speeds. Once on the other side though, Tariq found himself and the entire tank airborne for almost a full second, before Lillian came crashing down, jostling the tank. This time Tariq's restraints weren't quite able to catch him, and he snapped forward, banging his head against his controls. Glancing behind him, Tariq watched as the rest of Cataphract-3 leap off the same loading dock they had.

"Driver, continue going straight and into those woods," Noble ordered as Tariq rubbed his head, grateful he was wearing his helmet. A couple of Banshees went screaming by overhead and he swiveled his turret around but they were moving too fast for him to track.

Rotating forward, Tariq watched as they cut across the asphalt and towards the back of the lot where a small wooden fence was all that divided the property of the store and a small forest.

Corona ran right through the fence and into the woods, bowling over a small tree as he did and throwing splinters and snow in all directions. Then they were making their way through the forest, uprooting trees and smashing branches. Tariq glanced up and through the snow covered canopy above them, he could just barely make out the Banshees circling above them like vultures.

"Gunner, can you engage?" Noble called out.

"Negative. Can't elevate my barrels that high and there's too many branches that will interfere with my laser to get a lock," Tariq instantly reported.

"Well, maybe those Banshees will leave us alone -"

 _ **FWOOZ! KABOOM!**_

An entire metric ton of dirt and snow was overturned as one of the Banshees randomly fired a fuel rod cannon into the woods.

"Fuckers are persistent, aren't they?" Noble snarled. "Gunner, I got to help navigate. Take over the RWS!"

"Copy that Top!" Tariq replied as he locked the turret in a rearward position, then slaved the RWS to his controls. His screen flickered, and then suddenly he wasn't viewing the world through the narrow vision of his optics, but from the top of the tank.

Taking a moment to orientate himself, he switched over to thermals and panned upwards, searching for targets. Unlike the main cannon, the RWS had an elevation range of up to eight-five degrees, allowing him to easily target the Banshees.

Spotting one right away diving towards them, Tariq pulled the trigger.

 _RATATATA! RATATA! RATATATA!_

His first burst missed as he was still working out the lead, but his next two burst were mostly on point.

"Driver, start going diagonally to the right a little bit," Tariq heard Noble ordering as he continued to fire. "There should be a service road that should take us directly to the ODG. Get on that."

"Copy!" Corona called back and moved as ordered.

Tariq bit back a curse as a branch smacked against the RWS, throwing his aim off. Spinning the RWS around to shake the branch off, Tariq reacquired his target and continued firing but it wasn't easy. Unlike the road or even the warehouse, the ground wasn't leveled, making for a very bumpy ride, and unlike the main gun, the RWS wasn't equipped with a stabilizer. Because of that, most of his bullets seemed to be hitting the trees instead of the Covenant.

"Fucking shit!" Tariq snapped as the two Banshees he was shooting at disappeared.

 _ **CLANG! CLANG!**_

Metal rang out as a couple of plasma bolts hit the side of Lillian's turret. Tariq spun around and spotted another duo of Banshees flying right at him, cannons blazing. Aiming at the lead one, Tariq unloaded on him.

 _RATATATA! RATATATA! RAT - CLICK!_

"Shit! I'm out, I gotta reload!" Tariq yelled, unbuckling his harness.

"3-1, this is 07, we're black on our RWS, we need to reload. Cover us!" Noble yelled over the radio as Tariq grabbed a couple of ammo cans from their spot on the floor.

Shimmying out of his seat, Tariq worked his way passed Noble and to the hatch at the top of the turret. Punching it open and ignoring the chunks of brick that came tumbling in, Tariq popped his head out.

"Oh shit!" he yelped, quickly ducking back down as he saw a large tree branch headed in his direction.

The branch smashed into the RWS and shattered, showering Tariq with snow, splinters, and sawdust, but he ignored it as he climbed outside and worked his way towards the machine gun. Popping open the ammo carrier, he ripped out the empty can and tossed it off the tank.

"Top, I need those cans!" he yelled into his intercom.

One of them immediately poked out of the open hatch.

 _"Here take them!"_

Tariq grabbed them and fanatically began working on reloading, weaving the belt of ammo through the feed chute and into the chamber. He racked the charging handle a couple of times.

"Sergeant, heads up! Incoming at your nine!"

Tariq's head snapped up to see a Banshee headed straight towards them.

"Ah crap! I'm switching to manual!" Tariq warned.

Ripping out the remote access cable from the rear of the RWS and hastily extending the spade grips, Tariq spun the machine gun around and squeezed the trigger.

Tree branches exploded as the heavy machine gun rounds punched right through them. It wasn't anything new, they'd been doing the same thing earlier, but now that Tariq wasn't crouched behind several centimeters worth of composite material and steel, it suddenly seemed a lot more impressive. Even the noise felt devastating, even with his noise canceling headset on, and Tariq had to resist the urge to stop shooting and slap his hands over his ears.

The Banshee quickly returned fire, and Tariq suddenly realized how very vulnerable he was now sitting outside. He did his best to hid behind the RWS, trying to make himself as small as possible as he continued to lay down machine gun fire.

 _CLUNG!_

Tariq was nearly thrown off the tank as Lillian went over a large bump, and they suddenly found themselves on a small, snow covered paved road. Recovering quickly, Tariq continued to fire as the Banshee roared passed.

 _"We're coming up to the ODG!"_ Noble reported and Tariq glanced forward to see the road leading straight to a military checkpoint, manned by a couple of UNSC Marines, with the main facility of the orbital defense generator looming behind it. _"Gunner, get back inside!"_

Plugging the RWS back in, Tariq awkwardly crawled back into the tank and slammed the hatch shut. He slid back to his station as the Marines hastily disabled the checkpoint's defenses, and the tanks sped through the now open gate and towards the ODG.

"Driver, pull to a stop by that building over there," Noble ordered. "3-1 Actual, dismount and come with me to get briefed. Sergeant Helmand! You have the vehicle!"

"Yes First Sergeant!" Tariq yelled back as Noble unplugged her headset and scampered out of the tank.

Grabbing the controls to the turret, Tariq hastily took a look around. Things weren't looking good. Blast craters coated the ground, several of the buildings were on fire, and there was debris strewn all over the place as Banshees and other heavier aircraft launched attack after attack on the facility. The Marines were responding in kind, with machine gun and missile fire filling the air, and the sight of a burning Seraph hulk nearby stood as a testament to the heavy fighting that was taking place, but it wasn't enough. Even as he watched, a fuel rod cannon slammed into one of the Marine's trailer mounted M95 "Lance" surface-to-air missile systems, blowing it to hell. There didn't appear to be any sign of infantry, but honestly, the aircraft alone seemed to be doing a credible job of damaging the ODG. He was beginning to wonder what good tanks would do in this situation.

Tariq suddenly heard a _pop_ over his headset and a light on his console turned on, indicating the exterior infantry telephone mounted on the back of their tank had just been taken off its cradle. He activated the rear camera to see who it was, only to come face to face with a frazzled looking Marine wearing the insignia of a 2nd lieutenant with the phone pressed against his ear.

 _"How many tanks do you have!?"_ the Marine demanded to know without preamble.

Tariq glanced around and quickly realized they must have been the first group from the battalion to arrive.

"We got five tanks and a SPAAG sir," Tariq reported.

 _"WHAT!? You shitting me? We were supposed to get reinforced by an entire armored battalion! Where the fuck are the rest of your vehicles?"_ the Marine demanded to know.

Tariq glanced at Corona, who could only shrug.

"They're coming sir," was all Tariq could think of to say.

 _"Fuck! Alright, fine. Take your tanks and follow me! We need to - "_

 _ **"INCOMING!"**_

The scream was the only warning they had before a _massive_ explosion erupted from somewhere behind them. The blast was so powerful, even Tariq, nestled deep within a cocoon of steel, still felt the concussion from the shockwave on his body as it rippled across the ground, and his ears were left ringing ever so slightly.

 _"Actual to 07! What the_ _ **fuck**_ _was that!?"_

 _"This is 3-2!"_ someone shouted before Tariq could respond. _"3-4 just took a direct hit from a plasma charge! 3-4 is down, I say again, 3-4_ _ **IS DOWN!**_ _"_

"Son of a bitch!" Tariq gasped, spinning his turret around to look.

The plasma charge must have landed directly on top of the turret and set off all the tank's ammo and fuel, hence the intensity of the explosion, because 3-4's turret was completely obliterated. Pieces of it were strewn all over the place, and one of the barrels to the main cannon was sticking out of the ground a few meters away like a dart, having been thrown so hard by the explosion it had embedded itself a good half meter into the concrete road. As for the main body of the tank, the explosion had split it open like a banana, and welded the tracks directly to the ground through the sheer heat of the blast. Of the tank's crew, there was no sign, having been no doubt instantly incinerated.

"Son of a bitch," Tariq repeated. "Dude, we got to find some cover, we're sitting ducks out here. Lieutenant sir, do we have…"

Tariq started speaking into his radio but as he glanced at his rear camera, he realized the Lieutenant he'd been speaking to not even a full minute ago was gone. Stuck outside out in the open, the Lieutenant had not had any protection from the explosion, and the overpressure wave alone had torn the poor man to shreds, leaving Tariq's camera splattered with blood and guts. Tariq grimaced and quickly switched off the camera.

"Shit."

" _07, this is Actual, give me a sitrep!"_

"Actual, we're intact but we're sitting ducks out here," Tariq reported, and winced as a plasma charge landed several meters away, showering Lillian with debris. "Those Seraphs are carpet bombing the shit out of this place and it's only a matter of time before another one of us gets hit. We need to find some cover, now! Over."

" _Affirmative. The Marines have some bunkers they've built specifically for us. Come by the building and pick up me, over!"_

"Copy that."

Tariq lowered his radio. "Driver, forward! Get us close to that building so Actual doesn't have to run out in the open!"

There was a grinding noise as Corona shifted into gear, and then Lillian lurched forward towards the building. Seizing control of the RWS, Tariq began firing into the air, trying to lay down some cover fire.

As they approached the building, Tariq looked around and spotted Noble, SMG in hand and awkwardly crotched behind a Hesco barrier wall next to Cataphract-3's commanding officer as well as a couple of Marines from the generator.

"Corona, you see the First Sergeant?"

"Yeah, I got her!" Corona yelled back as he directed Lillian in her direction.

As the tank pulled up alongside her, Tariq reached up and started to pop open the hatch, but instead of climbing onto the tank to get in, Noble stood up instead and started waving her hand.

" _07, follow me! I'm walking us over to the bunkers!"_ was all she said before she took off running.

"What? Fucking shit, don't do that! God dammit. Driver, forward! Draw up parallel next to the First Sergeant, and use the tank's bulk to give her cover!"

Corona jammed on the accelerator, launching the tank forward until he was parallel with Noble. Then he did his best to keep pace with her, giving her a narrow corridor where she was between the tank and the wall of the building. In the meantime, Tariq turned the turret outwards and began searching for something to shoot at. He spotted a flight of Seraphs in the distance and he swiveling the RWS around and opened up on them, only to have the rounds fall very short of them as the Seraphs were flying far higher than Tariq had realized, and the .50cal rounds just didn't have enough power to climb that high. Not that they would have been all the effective, even if they could.

Ducked down in a crouched run, Noble led them pass the buildings and out into an open area where at least two M95 SAMs were set up, protected by one M9 "Wolverine" halftrack. Between the batteries were the bunkers. They weren't anything special. A large inverted concrete halfpipe partially sunken into the ground and large enough for an entire Grizzly MBT to fit underneath, protecting it from air attacks. There were two ramps at either opening to the bunker. At the rear, there was a gradually declining slope to allow the tank to drive into the bunker. At the front, there was a far steeper ramp angled at about sixty degrees that a tank could drive up onto and give its turret the elevation range it needed to engage in either indirect fire missions or against aerial targets.

"Driver, get us into cover. Move it, now," Tariq snapped and Corona floored it, all but diving underneath the halfpipe. And not a moment too soon as a fuel rod cannon slammed into the bunker, causing the entire structure to violently shake, but the meter thick reinforced concrete wall held fast.

Tariq moved to the side as Noble came diving into the tank, slamming the hatch shut behind her and locking it.

"Okay, listen up," she hurriedly began. "Covies have already taken out the primary generator but secondary systems are still up and running. But if that gets taken out, then that's it, we've lost the battle. We can't let that happen. The Marines and their SAMs are more than capable of taking out the high altitude Seraph bombers and Phantom gunships, but the fucking Banshees keep running interference and those trailer mounted Lances don't have enough armor to withstand those attacks. So our job right now is to take out those Banshees so those SAMs can finally do some work. That means Gunner, do whatever you have to, to get it done."

"Top, any sign the Covie are deploying ground troops?" Tariq immediately asked.

"No, and there doesn't appear to be any showing up any time soon. So expend all ordnance if you have too."

"What about the rest of the battalion, any sign of them First Sergeant?" Corona interjected.

"Yeah, two platoons from Joker Company, Hippeis-1 and 3, just showed up at the eastern gate, so everyone _is_ coming, but for now it's just us. So let's get to it!"

Tariq grunted and turned his attention back to his station. He loaded up a couple of beam riders into the main cannon, switching their warheads from laser guided to self-seeking mode, then waited for Noble and Corona to get ready.

"Ready?" Noble asked. "Driver, forward!"

Lillian surged forward, up onto the steep ramp, to the point where Tariq started to feel like he was no longer sitting in his chair, but laying on it. As soon as they emerged from the bunker, Noble highlighted a number of targets.

"Target! Incoming Banshees, five o'clock!" she bellowed. "Both barrels, fire when ready!"

"On the way!" Tariq hollered, and pulled the trigger.

The missiles departed the barrels but Tariq couldn't see if they hit because immediately, Noble roared, "Driver, back! Gunner, reload!"

Lillian grumbled and snorted before slipping back under the cover of the bunker. Tariq impatiently tapped his foot as he waited for the autoloaders to finish reloading. "Up!"

"Driver, forward!"

Lillian emerged from the bunker once again.

"Target! Flight of Banshees bearing one zero three!"

"On target!" Tariq immediately replied.

"Fire!"

"On the way!"

Lillian's main cannons recoiled again.

"Driver, reverse!"

Lillian backed up into cover again as Tariq waited for his status light to turn green again.

"Gun ready!"

"Forward! Solo Banshee, direct twelve!"

Tariq checked his sights for the range. "On target!"

"Send it!"

"On the way!"

The guns barked and this time because of the Banshee's angle of approach, Tariq was able to watch as the shell fly through the air and score a direct hit, instantly destroying the vehicle.

"Driver, reverse!"

Tariq's sight picture disappeared as the tank backpedaled into the bunker. Behind him, Tariq could hear the _clunk clunk_ as the autoloaders worked. "Up!"

"Forward!"

Lillian lurched forward, and Tariq felt his eyes widen as he saw a green glow headed their way. "INCOMING!"

"Reverse, REVERSE!"

The tank quickly jerked back into cover, and the ground shook as the fuel rod cannon just barely missed them, hitting the bunker instead.

"We good? Gunner?" Noble asked, glanced over at Tariq.

"All good!"

"Driver?"

Corona turned around and gave her a thumbs up.

"Good! Forward!"

Corona gave the tank a bit of gas.

"Enemy Banshees, two seven niner!"

"On target!"

"Fire!"

"On the way!"

This time, Corona didn't even wait for the order, immediately backing up as the main cannons recoiled. Tariq watched as his reload counter ticked down and the status light turned green.

"Gun ready!"

"Advance!"

Lillian emerged from the bunker just in time to see one of the Lance batteries nearby firing a missile, and Tariq was able to track the rocket's path as it flew straight up into the air and scored a direct hit on a far distant Seraph, knocking it out of the sky. Tariq watched as the Seraph went spiraling towards the earth, but at about three hundred meters above ground level, the Slip-lip pilot was somehow able to recover his fighter, pulling out of the fatal dive and drawing parallel with the ground.

"New target! Damaged Seraph, three zero five degrees, northwest by west! Range, two six three zero meters! Gunner, let me know when you have target!"

Due to the heavily armored nature of the target, Tariq hastily removed the missiles from his cannons and swapped them with HEAT rounds instead. He impatiently jiggled his leg as he waited for his status light to turn green, while at the same time, silently wishing he hadn't dumped his SABOTs rounds when loading up his tank several hours ago as they would have been a far more effective shell to use against the Seraph when compared to HEAT rounds

"Set!"

"Fire!"

"On the way!"

The main cannon's recoiled and Corona started to back up.

"Driver, hold! Target, miss! Gunner, reengage!"

"Fuck," Tariq muttered as he hastily thumbed the button for another two HEAT rounds. Throwing his face into his gun sights, Tariq panned his turret a bit to the left to compensate for the lead as his status light turned green.

"On target!"

"Fire!"

"On the way!"

As the guns recoiled, Tariq hastily switched over to his coax and opened up on the Seraph, hoping to get lucky. Above him, he could hear the RWS going off as well as Noble opened up with the .50cal.

 _RATATATATATATATATATATATA!_

In the distance, Tariq could see a flash of blue as the HEAT rounds hit home. The Seraph instantly swan dived, and this time the pilot wasn't able to save himself. A blue explosion lit up the horizon.

"Target destroyed!" Noble triumphantly reported. "Driver, fall back!"

As they returned to the bunker, Tariq glanced at his ammo counter.

"Hey, First Sergeant, head's up, we're burning through ammo fast!" he warned.

"How many shells we have left? And give me the breakdown!"

"We got twenty-eight shells left: twelve canister, eight HEAT, and eight beam riders left!" Tariq reported.

"Shit. Okay, keep an eye on the situation and keep me posted!"

"Copy!"

"Driver, advance!"

Lillian emerged from cover.

"Target! Flight of Banshees bearing two two one! Engage with canister!"

Tariq hit a series of buttons, tossing a canister rounds into the left barrel. "Gun ready!"

"Fire!"

"On the way!"

Tariq fired both barrels, spraying the area around the Banshees with several thousand tungsten ball bearings. He could see some of the Banshees getting hit, but as expected, at this distance, the canister rounds alone weren't enough to knock any of the Banshees out of the sky. They were, however, enough to force the entire flight to divert and Tariq could see them quickly climbing as Lillian retreated back to cover.

"Gun up!"

"Forward!"

Lillian climbed up the ramp, and Tariq was immediately confronted with the sight of a Type-29 "Vampire" close-support fighter unloading its plasma cannons into the nearest Lance battery, destroying it instantly.

"Where the fuck did this thing come from?" Tariq demanded to know, even as on his monitor, a red holographic square enveloped the vehicle.

"Target! Fire when ready!"

"On the way!"

Tariq squeezed the trigger, firing both barrels at the vehicle. Unfortunately, all the canister rounds did to the Vampire was cast one hell of a light show as they ricocheted off the vehicle's hull, doing light to no damage. At once, the Vampire turned its heavy needle cannon in their direction.

"Reverse!" Noble barked as the Vampire open fired, sending needlers the size of spears in their direction.

The needles streaked towards them as Lillian quickly backed into the bunker but unlike the plasma bolts or fuel rod cannons, the needles _actually followed them into the bunker._ There was no time to react; all Tariq could do was brace himself.

 _BOOM!_

Three needlers struck Lillian right in the mantle and exploded, throwing crystal shards in all directions. The entire tank shook but fortunately the blamite rounds were optimized for penetrating moderately armored fighters, not main battle tanks.

"Everyone alright?" Noble yelled out.

"Gunner is green!" Tariq reported.

"I'm good! I mean, Driver is green!" Corona yelled back.

"Driver, check our hull! Gunner, what the hell did you hit that vehicle with?" Noble demanded to know.

"Canister rounds!"

"Why the hell would you do that!?"

"You had me fire canister rounds just a few moments before, and I thought you were going to have me do it again, so I reloaded the main cannon with canisters," Tariq admitted.

Noble let out an audible sigh. "And this is why we were supposed to have seven fucking days to train up," Tariq heard her mutter under her breath.

"Armor is intact First Sergeant!" Corona reported.

Noble shook her head. "Gunner, you and I are going to have work on our communication," she told him gently. "But for now, load up one HEAT and one beam rider. Switch beam rider to laser guided and standby to engage!"

Tariq nodded and quickly did as she ordered. "Gun up!"

"Driver, advance!"

The tank rolled up the ramp and they were confronted once again with the same Vampire from before. "Target! Vampire, direct twelve! Gunner, target the main engines with HEAT and fire when ready!"

"On the way!"

Tariq fired at the same time the Vampire did, and he gritted his teeth as Lillian was raked with a combination of plasma cannon and needler fire. There was an explosion from outside the hull as the tank's left smoke dispenser was blown off, causing a cloud of black smoke to instantly form, but the damage wasn't enough to distract Tariq from watching as his shell flew through the air and slammed into the Vampire's engine housing, blowing a neat hole but not much more than that. He waited for Noble to order Corona to retreat, but instead, he noticed she was aiming their targeting laser directly at the hole on the Vampire they had just made.

"Beam rider!" she yelled. "Fire!"

Tariq squeezed the trigger. "On the way!"

"Driver, reverse!" Noble screamed as the missile sped downrange, even as more needles started zeroing in on their position.

 _BABOOM BABOOM BABOOM!_

Lillian shook once more as she was struck by a series of needlers. This time though, an alarm began sounding and through his optics, Tariq could see flames shooting out from Lillian's right side hull where one of their primary fuel cells were located.

"Fire on the right hull!" Tariq screamed.

"Driver, cut the fuel feed from that cell, switch over to the auxiliary, and standby to advance!" Noble bellowed even as she punched the button for the fire extinguisher, and Tariq could see white foam shooting out from the hole in the armor. "Gunner, load up two HEATs and let me know when you're ready!"

Behind him, Tariq could hear the autoloader working in overdrive then his status light turned green.

"Gun up!"

"Driver, forward!"

Corona grunted as he shifted into gear. Lillian scooted up the ramp and Tariq started to take up the slack from his trigger when he noticed the Vampire was gone.

"Where's the Vampire?" Noble hollered as she swiveled her periscopes around.

With his heart in his throat, Tariq grabbed a hold of his own periscope with one hand and quickly followed suit. He let out a sigh of relief though when he spotted it to his right.

"Got it!" he yelled. "Three forty degrees, north-northwest! It's going down!"

And indeed it was. Through his periscope, Tariq could see blue flames shooting out from the Vampire's engines as it slowly glided to the ground like an airship that had a gas leak. It was a little hard to tell through his periscope, but it appeared to Tariq they had managed to score a direct hit with their missile, blowing the Vampire's engine and forcing it to the ground.

"Looks like we got it the first time!" Tariq reported. "It's going down! It's going down! It's down!"

"Good shooting Gunner!" Noble complimented. "Alright, new – "

 _ **BADABOOM!**_

Lillian was roughly shoved to the side as a plasma charge slammed into the ground a few meters beside them. Waves of dirt washed over them as another two charges detonated roughly in the same spot in quick succession.

"BACK UP! BACK UP!" Noble screamed even as the tank quickly began reversing. A fuel road cannon slammed into the ramp right where they had been moments ago, leaving a behind a large crater, but for the most part Lillian was unharmed as she backed up into the bunker. Unfortunately, this time it seemed as if the bunker wasn't able to offer much protection as another three plasma charges detonated directly on top. Chunks of concrete tumbled onto the tank and Tariq looked up in alarm to see cracks forming in the roof.

"The Covies have got us zeroed!" Noble yelled. "How the hell have they zeroed in on us?"

With a sinking sensation, Tariq glanced at the spot where their destroyed smoke dispenser had fallen. As he suspected, black smoke was still billowing out of the smoke grenades there, filtering out from the bunker entrance and up into the sky.

"They're zeroing in on that smoke!" Tariq screeched, pointing. "Top, we got to get out of here! The Covies have a lock on this bunker, and they're going to keep pounding it until they crack it wide open!"

"Driver, back up! Get us out of here!" Noble immediately ordered.

Tariq could see sweat pouring down Corona's face as he threw the tank into gear and slammed on the accelerator. Lillian jerked and sped out from the rear of the bunker. Immediately, they were set upon by a pack of Banshees which had been seemingly waiting for them.

 _CLANGCLANGCLANG!_

"GUNNER, YOU ARE WEAPONS FREE!" Noble howled as Lillian was struck several times by plasma bolts.

Tariq immediately jammed on the trigger to his coax machine gun, firing nearly a hundred rounds in a single trigger pull. Orange-red tracers filled the air as Tariq desperately tried to track the speeding Banshees before they could do any more damage to his vehicle.

"Banshee, nine o'clock high!" Noble yelled out, firing the RWS as fast as she could.

Tariq swiveled the turret around and fired as soon as he spotted the Banshee, only to miss with his HEAT round. He followed up with more machine gun fire from his coax, before firing again. This time his aim was a bit more on point, but even still the HEAT round only clipped the top of the Banshee's canopy and because the electric trigger on the warhead's nose didn't hit, the round failed to detonate. He impatiently loaded up beam riders while he continued firing with the coax.

"Banshee, six o'clock, low! Follow my tracers!" Noble commanded.

Tariq spun around to see a Banshee getting illuminated by Noble's tracer fire flying in low, probably trying to score a direct hit on Lillian's more vulnerable rear end. Bring the turret around, Tariq fired a single missile while at the same time, hosed down the Banshee with machine gun fire. The missile missed, but the Banshee must have been already damaged by something else because a single tracer round from his coax struck the Banshee's left gravity pod, causing it to explode. Despite this, the Banshee continued to speed towards them but Tariq didn't see him charging any weapons. He suddenly realized what the pilot intended to do.

"He's trying to ram us!" Noble screamed as she swiveled her gun around and pulled the trigger, only for an audible _click_ to fill the air. "Shit! I'm out, I'm out!"

"I got him!" Tariq lowered his gun and pulled the trigger, only for his screen to flash red. "Misfire! Fuck! Misfire!"

He glanced at his optics only to see the Banshee getting closer and closer and he knew at the speed the Banshee was flying at, it had a serious chance of outright destroying Lillian. There was only one thing he could think of doing.

"GET OUT OF THE TANK NOW!" he screamed, unbuckling his harness.

It took Corona and Noble a few precious moments to realize what he said before they reacted. Noble immediately popped open the hatch above her and hauled herself out while Corona tore out of the driver's hatch and threw himself clear of the tank.

Hesitating only long enough to grab his SMG, Tariq pulled himself out of the tank and dove straight off the top of the turret, fortunately landing in a pile of snow which helped break his fall. Glancing behind him, he could see the crippled Banshee heading straight for Lillian and he cringed, wondering if he was going to be able to get clear before it hit.

 _ **SWOOOOOSHHH…BOOOOM!**_

A missile came out of nowhere and punched right through the Banshee, ripping it in half! The back half instantly blew up while the front half hit the ground, bounced, hit the ground again, and then began sliding across the snow. It took him a moment, but to Tariq's horror, he realized at some point the Banshee had hit something on the ground and was no longer on a collision course with Lillian, but was now _sliding directly towards him._

"Crapcrapcrap!" Tariq yelped as he tried to stand up to run away, but slipped on the snow, landing face down. He immediately rolled to the side as he heard the Banshee come across him.

 _HISSSSSSSS!_

Tariq curled up into a ball as he heard the Banshee sliding across the ground, melting its way through the snow, covering him in slush, and missing him by mere centimeters. He laid there in that ball, breathing heavily until he heard the Banshee finally come to a stop.

Taking a moment to try and compose himself, Tariq waited until he had managed to get a hold of himself. Slowly uncurling himself, he forced himself to sit up and take a look around.

The first thing he saw was the front half of the Banshee sitting in the snow barely three meters away from where he was. The back half was all black from the explosion and torn to shreds from the missile strike, with jagged piece of metal sticking out in all directions. Looking behind him, Tariq turned to see where the missile had come from, only to see a number of Grizzly tanks and Armadillo IFVs come pouring into the base from the same gate Tariq himself had come from. The missile had been fired by one of the IFVs and as Tariq watched, the back ramp opened up and a bunch of infantrymen came running out. Leading them was his friend Chenko, and Tariq couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief at that.

Carefully climbing to his feet, Tariq started brushing himself off, when he heard groaning from somewhere behind him. He froze, and slowly turned around. From within the remains of the Banshee, he could see something moving.

Whipping out his SMG, Tariq extended the stock and slowly advanced on the Banshee. Keeping his SMG at the low ready position, he cautiously walked around to the other side of the Banshee only to see –

"You got to be fucking kidding me," Tariq groaned as he lowered his weapon.

Despite his plane having been blown in half, somehow the Banshee Elite pilot was still alive, and trying to break free of the remains of his fighter. The Elite was completely fucked up, as would be expected, with his normally light blue armor completely covered in black soot. Not only that, as the Elite tried to force his way out of his seat, Tariq could see both of the Elite's legs had been blown off, and the only reason why the Elite hadn't bleed out yet was because the explosion had cauterized his stub shut.

At the sight of Tariq standing over him, the Elite immediately thrusted an arm out (which was missing a couple of fingers, Tariq absentmindedly noted) and tried to grab a blackened piece of metal lying on the ground nearby, which Tariq belatedly realized was a plasma rifle.

"Well," Tariq commented as he watched the Elite helplessly struggle. "I'll give you fuckers one thing: you are persistent."

He lifted his SMG.

 _Bang._

The Elite slumped to the ground, a fresh hole between his eyes. Tariq viciously kicked the body for good measure.

"SERGEANT!"

Tariq jumped as Noble and Corona emerged from around the tank and ran towards him.

"You alright Sergeant?" Noble yelled as she holstered her sidearm and walked towards him, clearly intent on checking him over for injuries. Tariq waved her off.

"I'm alright First Sergeant," he told her. "Just barely missed me."

"Fuck Sergeant, that was close," he heard Corona gasp and he inclined his head in agreement. But then Corona asked a question that caused Tariq's heart to freeze once more: "But where the fuck did all the Covenant go?"

Tariq snapped his head around. For the first time, he noticed all the Covenant fighters that had been attacking them were gone, leaving the skies empty. "Um…"

The sound of footsteps running through the snow towards them cause him to tense up, but Tariq quickly relaxed as he realized it was only Chenko.

"Dude, where the fuck did all the Covies go?" Tariq demanded to know before Chenko could say a word. Chenko shook his head.

"We saw them all headed due east as we were pulling up," he breathlessly informed them.

"What? Why?" Noble asked. "This facility is still operational. Why would the Covenant suddenly abandon their mission?"

"Maybe our reinforcements scared them off?" Corona suggested, but Chenko immediately shook his head.

"Nah man. They were already pulling away before we even got close."

Tariq felt a chill go down his spine that had nothing to do with the cold. "Chenko, buddy, what's due east of our location?" he asked, feeling faint.

Chenko looked at him strangely. "Um, a bunch of rivers, some shit towns, and…" he froze.

"The city of Byzas," Tariq finished.

"Oh crap," Chenko gasped.

"Hang on. Time out guys," Noble interjected. She pointed a finger at Tariq and Chenko. "You guys think the Covenant left to go attack a civilian target?"

Tariq and Chenko nodded.

"Why the hell would the Covenant abandon their mission of attacking a strategic military installation to go attack a civilian city center? That doesn't make any sense."

"It does if you consider the Covenant's overall goal of this attack," Tariq pointed out. "They wanted to glass this planet and wipe out all of humankind. They need their capital ships to do that, but in order for those ships to get in close, they need to take out the Navy's orbital defense platforms. There are two ways for them to do that: take out the generators…"

"Or take out the station itself," Chenko finished.

"Hang on," Corona interrupted. He pointed at the building that were still standing behind him. "If our generators are still up and operational, but the Covenant fighters just left… does that mean…"

"That means…" Tariq began as he turned he gaze skyward. "The Navy has just gotten its assed kicked. And now…"

"We've got a _**very**_ long day ahead of us."


	11. Chapter 11

Welcome back Broman!

You know, I'm going to be honest, I always look forward to your reviews. A, well, because I like reviews. But also because you're one of the few reviewers that I've seen, not just for my work, but in general, who always brings up some rather interesting points!

So, to answer your question: there's actually a reason why Actium itself seems a bit underprepared for this invasion (aside from, you know, being a surprise attack.) I'm not sure just how much of a role it's going to play in the plot, because I haven't gotten to that point yet, but it's something I intend to address at a later point. Because of that, I'm not going to get into it now, just in case I do end up deciding to make it a big deal.

As for why on a grand strategic level the UNSC as a whole doesn't seemed prepared in terms of AA weapons, I think you're on the right track. The human empire prior to the invasion of the Covenant is clearly very large, with colonies and holdings scattered across the galaxy. In order to control all that territory, and given the lack of teleporting technology (outside of the Forerunners,) the UNSC would need a lot of a ships; they would need a fleet big enough to not only absorb a lot of casualties, but one that would simply overwhelm any and all potential rivals that would potential crop up. And once you've establish space supremacy, there doesn't seem to be a real need for effective AA weapons.

Furthermore, I also have to wonder if the UNSC didn't just deliberately prevent the development of weapons like that, least the technology fall in the hands of the Insurrectionist. After all, the last thing the UNSC would want is some opposition group being able to shoot down their ships, especially since real-world history has shown us that a mobile ground-based launcher is a lot harder to track down than enemy ships: during the first Gulf War in the early 1990's, UN and NATO forces were able to completely destroy Saddam's air force, yet his scud launchers were almost never found.

Given that the UNSC's history is the same as our history, they would also be very much aware of that fact and would thus do their best to avoid suffering from the same fate.

Hope that makes sense to you!

Author's Note

So, last chapter, we got an idea of what was happening on the ground. Now it's back up to orbit to see how the Navy is holding out!

Hope you guys enjoy!

Special thanks to **Darkfire7881** for editing this chapter!

* * *

 **Chapter 11**

 **Wayward Station, High Orbit, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0951**

 **Amber**

Amber slowly lowered her arms and was immediately greeted with the words "REMOTE TURRET OFFLINE" in big red letters flashing across her screen.

"Son of a bitch!" she snapped, ripping off her helmet, headset, and goggles and tossing them aside.

Shoving herself away from her controls, Amber popped open the door to her station and found herself back inside the Remote Fire Control Center, sector Delta. It was a circular room with eight identical remote station pods lining the walls: four for the Onager turrets and four for the Lance turrets. A quick glance at the other seven pods in the room showed they were all occupied and operational, indicating Amber's turret was the only one that had been taken out so far.

Sitting in the center of the room and pouring over a series of consoles were the three frazzled looking fire control directors for this sector, two enlisted sailors and an officer. FC1 McCreary was one of those controllers.

Leaping from her seat, Amber dashed over towards him.

"FC1, my turret is down, I need a new one!" she hurried told him.

"Yeah, give me a minute!" McCreary distractedly yelled back without looking up from his console. "Ensign, I need you to fucking tell me what my priority targets are: am I still focusing on the incoming warships, those fighters, or the incoming boarding craft!? What the fuck do you want me to do, I need an order!"

"Okay, enough with the fucking warships, fleet will deal with them!" the officer snapped. "And forget about those fighters, they've broken through so now they're the Army and Air Force's problem now! Priority is all those boarding craft, especially the ones headed straight for Byzas Station!"

"Ensign, if you can get the Ramparts to focus fire on the craft coming right towards us, McCreary and I can switch over to the ones attacking Byzas!" the other fire controller suggested but the Ensign immediately shook his head.

"Negative, Wayward AI is telling me there's too many craft and he doesn't have enough turrets any longer to take them all out! We need to shift fire, either from Onagers or the Lances to help deal with them!"

"Staci, let me focus on the craft coming here and you focus on the ones going to Byzas because if my turrets miss they'll do a lot of damage to that station!" McCreary suggested but was immediately shot down by the Ensign.

"We can't do that our priority is the defense of Byzas even – "

"Fine!" Staci snapped. "McCreary, give me two of your turrets and I'll give you one of my Lances. You focus on defense, I'll focus on offense, copy?"

"Copy!" McCreary replied and immediately turned away. "Okay, all Delta turrets, Fire Control, new priority targets! All turrets, focus fire on the incoming boarding craft! Five and Six Delta, your focus is on the ones approaching Byzas Station, Seven Delta I need you to focus on defending us! All turrets, you're cleared to engage! Fire, fire, fire!"

"FC1, I still need that turret!" Amber urged.

"YEAH I KNOW!" McCreary yelled. "I'm working on it! Just fucking hang on! Staci, where's my fucking support!?"

Amber bit her lip as she fell silent and took a step back to let McCreary work. She found herself impatiently bouncing from one foot to the other and she tried to stop herself from fidgeting, but found she couldn't help it. Due to the holographic nature of the consoles in front of her, Amber could see everything the fire controllers were, abet it was all mirrored to her. Still, it wasn't hard to see that Wayward Station was surrounded by _**a lot**_ of red dots and the fact that she was just standing here doing nothing was making her nervous.

 _BOOM._

The entire station shook as something exploded in the distance, and Amber looked up in alarm as the rumbling caused some of the lights overhead to flicker.

"Ensign, heads up! My ammo reserves are running low, I'm going to need a resupply, ASAP!" Staci suddenly called out, catching Amber's attention.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm already on it!" the Ensign yelled back, a phone pressed against his ear. "McCreary, give a status update on your reserves!"

"I'm down to about twenty-five percent shells! I can redirect some of the shells from turret eight now that she's down, but if we continue this rate of fire, I'm going to be out in ten minutes!"

Amber jumped as the bulkhead door to the room suddenly opened, and a stressed out looking sailor came running in.

"Sir, I need whatever personnel you're not using right now to come with me!" he demanded.

"Hey. HEY! Take her!" McCreary snapped his fingers and pointed straight at Amber before the Ensign could say anything. "I don't have a spare turret so she's no fucking good to me right now!"

The new sailor instantly turned towards Amber. "You, come with me!" he yelled before immediately turning around and dashing out of the room.

Startled, Amber took a moment to glance at McCreary, but McCreary clearly had already forgotten all about her as he had immediately turned back to his console and was busy shouting more orders into his headset. Without another word, Amber went to go chase after the sailor.

As they ran down the corridors, all sorts of questions began swirling around in her mind, and she glanced at the man's rank insignia in order to ask them. Unfortunately as she did, she suddenly realized the man in front of her wasn't actually a sailor, but in fact a Marine. The problem was, Amber knew nothing about Marine ranks as their insignia were totally different from the Navy ones, so she wasn't entirely sure how to address him.

"Hey um…" Amber hesitated before deciding to err on the side of caution. "Hey, sir?"

"Don't need to call me sir, I'm not an officer!" the Marine yelled back. "Lance Corporal Tassano! I'm an E-3, just like you!"

"Sorry," Amber hastily said. "Hey Lance Corporal! What the hell is going on?"

"We're getting boarded!" Tassano yelled back. "We got Covies crawling all over the hanger on the main deck! Combat Teams(1) are responding, but we might not have enough of them!"

"Oh crap," Amber muttered under her breath as she hurriedly picked up her pace. "So where are we going now?"

"Oh Five Level(2)!" Tassano informed her as they reached an elevator and he quickly called the car. "Come on, we got to hurry, so let's pick up the pace!"

The entire station shook again as Amber and Tassano boarded the car. Riding the elevator down to their destination, Amber anxiously shifted her weight from one leg to the other as she listened to Wayward, the station's dumb AI making announcements over the PA system.

" _Warning! All station personnel, Covenant incursions detected on main deck port and starboard side. Combat Teams Alpha through Delta, engage enemy boarders!"_

" _Combat Teams India through Lima, move to secondary positions and standby to engage!"_

" _All crew and operations personnel, evacuate Third Deck and Zero Three Level."_

" _Security Teams(1) Echo and Golf, deploy to secure portside blast doors on Third Deck and Zero Three Level."_

" _Security Teams Foxtrot and Hotel, deploy to secure starboard blast doors on Third Deck and Zero Three Level."_

" _All military personnel not currently engaged, report to Fifth Deck or Zero Five Level for immediately reassignment."_

The elevator came to an abrupt stop and Amber was forced to throw out her arms to stabilize herself as, at the exact same time, the entire station shook once more. The doors to the car opened, and Amber and Tassano were immediately confronted with two sailors, a Chief Warrant Officer and an enlisted man, both decked out in full battle gear and pushing a cart full of explosives. At the _ding_ of the door opening, the CWO glanced at them.

"You the only ones?" he immediately asked them.

"Yes sir," Tassano replied before Amber could.

"Fine. Wayward, lock down the elevators and seal all the doors expect for this one," the CWO barked into his radio as he gestured for Amber and Tassano to quickly exit.

" _Acknowledged."_

"Marine, you're EOD, right?" the CWO asked as he pulled out a bunch of blasting caps.

"Yessir!"

"Good. You, come with us. Gunner's Mate, go to the armory at the end of this corridor and get some armor and weapons. Someone will be by to assign you to a Security Team. Go."

"Aye sir!"

Amber took off down the corridor as the three men disappeared into the elevator behind her. Entering the armory, she was confronted with the sight of nearly a dozen sailors of a variety of ratings in various states of readiness. Amber looked around, a little bit unsure of what to do next.

"Amber!"

Amber jerked at the sound of someone yelling her name, and she turned around to see the one person she really needed to see at the moment.

"Poolsie," she whispered, feeling her knees go weak with relief. Without thinking, Amber walked over and grabbed Poolsie, pulling her into a tight hug.

She must have taken Poolsie by surprise because it took her a few moments to return the hug. But when she did, Amber could hear her sigh in relief and Amber felt a stab of vindication, knowing she hadn't been the only one freaking out about her friends.

"Poolsie, are you alright? Are you okay?" Amber immediately asked as she broke away from the hug and leaned back so she could look Poolsie over for possible injuries. "I didn't get to see where you went, so I didn't know if you were okay or not."

"I'm good, I'm fine," Poolsie hastily tried to assure her, looking startled though Amber had no idea why.

"Good, because I wasn't sure if you'd been assigned to one of the Lance turrets near my sector," Amber quickly told her. "So when I saw one of them get taken out by Covenant fighters, I wasn't sure if that was the one you were going to be in and I was concerned you weren't going to be okay but obviously we had no way of contacting each other so I couldn't check but I also couldn't leave my turret to go see you so –"

"Amber!" Poolsie said rather loudly, interrupting her and Amber felt her cheeks start to burn as she suddenly realized she'd been rambling. "Amber, I'm fine, I'm okay! In fact, I didn't even get a chance to get assigned to a turret because none were available. I've been running from deck to deck moving munitions around."

"Oh…" Amber slowly said. All of a sudden, Amber felt very foolish for all the worrying she'd been doing. In fact, in hindsight, none of her anxiety even made sense; even if Poolsie had been manning that Lance turret, it was still a remotely accessed turret so even if the turret got taken out by the enemy, the gunner would have been fine. After all, that's exactly what happened to her.

"But thank you," Poolsie hastily said, perhaps sensing Amber's change in mood. "For worrying. It means a lot to me."

"Oh… you're welcome I guess…" Amber said sheepishly. She suddenly realized she was still holding onto Poolsie's arms and she quickly dropped them. She could see the barest hint of a delighted grin on Poolsie's face and Amber suddenly felt even more embarrassed for her attitude. "Um… I still need to get some armor. You?"

"Yeah." Poolsie tugged at the jacket she was wearing. "This is not exactly something I want to be wearing if I have to fight against the Covenant."

"Okay then, let's go."

Shoving her way through the crowd of people, Amber headed to where the body armor and helmets were stored, trusting Poolsie would follow in her wake. As she walked, Amber tried to get her head back into a state of equilibrium. Now that she knew Poolsie was alright, Amber couldn't help but look back to her emotional state half an hour ago and cringe over how foolish she had been. Of course Poolsie was going to be alright: it wasn't like she was a fighter pilot or a ground pounder. She was a weapon's gunner, like Amber was, and the only way she would have gotten hurt was if the station blew up at which point, Amber would have been dead too.

Shaking her head, Amber quickly grabbed a set of body armor off the rack that was her size and began strapping it on, trying to distract herself from her own thoughts.

"Alright everybody, eyes here!"

Amber jerked her head up as she heard someone calling from the front of the room. She spotted a man in full battle gear, complete with rifle slung over his shoulder, waving his hand, trying to catch everyone's attention.

"My name is Chief Master-at-Arms Job Leporidae and if you haven't heard by now, we are under attack!" the man bellowed. "We've got an unknown amount of Covenant boarders attacking the main hangers on First Deck. Their current intentions are unclear, but we can only assume whatever their objective is, it will _**not**_ be conducive to our good health! We have got to repeal them, full stop! Marine combat teams are responding, but they will not be able to hold out indefinitely. So as of right now, everybody in this room is assigned to my detail; welcome to Security Team Oscar!"

"If you haven't already, get a rifle from the racks and make sure you get ammo from the back of the room. Max it out! Whatever you can carry! You all have three minutes to get ready, so move it! I need anyone who's got a weapon's specialty rating to come see me, _right now_!"

"Oh shit, that's us! We got to go!" Amber urged as she snagged two helmets off the shelf and tossed one over to Poolsie. She quickly jogged over Leporidae.

"Hey Chief! You wanted to see all weapon's specialty ratings?" Amber called out as she drew near.

"Yeah. Which ones are you?" Leporidae demanded.

"I'm a Gunner's Mate: GM Owain!"

"And I'm Missile Technician Pool!" Poolsie hastily added.

"Either one of you a graduate of the Small Arms Marksmanship or the Expeditionary Combat Skills courses?"

Amber raised her hand. "My section chief is a certified Crew Served Weapons instructor and he gave me and my section a four hour familiarization class once," she volunteered.

Leporidae immediately unslung the rifle he had on his shoulder and ejected the magazine. Clearing the chamber and locking the bolt to the rear, he handed it over to Amber.

"GM, you know what this is?"

Amber blinked in surprise and glanced at the rifle in her hands. "Yeah Chief: it's an MA5B infantry automatic rifle(3)."

"You know how to use it?"

In lieu of a response, Amber racked the charging handle a few times to make sure the rifle was cleared, before conducting a quick function's check, making sure the safety, the trigger, and the charging handle were all in good working condition. As she pulled the trigger one last time and letting the hammer fall on an empty chamber, she flicked the safety back on and offer it back to Leporidae, who shook his head.

"Take it," he ordered. "Congratulations Gunner's Mate, you're now my designated automatic rifleman. MT Pool, you're her 'A' gunner. Grab a shotgun and all the sixty round magazines you can carry, and you watch her back. If she goes down, you become my new gunner. Got it? Good. Max out ammo and report back to me in two minutes, go."

Without waiting for a response, Leporidae immediately turned away and grabbed a nearby sailor by the shoulder. "Hey, HM3, what's your primary NEC code?" Amber heard him ask as she darted away.

At the back of the room, Amber found a table stacked with loaded magazines. She started stuffing as many sixty round magazines as she could into her pouches and pockets, to the point where she could actually start to feel it weighing her down. Poolsie quickly joined her with a shotgun in hand. As she started to load up, Amber noticed Poolsie was breathing rather heavily, as if she had just ran a couple of laps around the track.

"Poolsie: you okay?"

"Yeah," Poolsie breathlessly replied. "Just… you know, when I joined the Navy, I didn't actually think I would ever see the Covenant up close and personal."

"Yeah, you and me both," Amber admitted with a nervous chuckle. "Almost makes you think, you know, if we were going to have to fight like a ground pounder, maybe we should have joined the Marines and gotten some, like, _actual_ infantry fighting training."

Poolsie snorted. "I don't think I would have survived Boot Camp," she confessed. "You know I can't do a pull-up to save my life."

"Yeah, well, just stay close to me, okay?" Amber urged. "We'll watch each other's back."

The station abruptly shook once more, causing all the shelves to rattle and the overhead lights to flicker. Amber looked up in alarm as dust fell from the ceiling.

" _All stations, all stations, we've lost control of main deck! Combat Teams Alpha through Delta, fall back to secondary defensive positions! Combat Teams India through Lima move to Second Deck and Zero Two Level and engage hostiles!"_

" _Security Teams Echo and Golf, move to assist!"_

" _All crew and ops personnel evacuate Fourth Deck and Zero Four Level!"_

" _Reserve Security Teams Mike and November, move to secure port and starboard blast doors on Fourth Deck!"_

" _Reserve Security Teams Oscar and Papa, move to secure port and starboard blast doors on Zero Four Level!"_

"That's us people!" Leporidae immediately bellowed. "Alright everyone, get on the ready line! Everybody on the ready line!"

Amber hurriedly grabbed one more magazine before following Poolsie to the front of the room.

"Outside! Get on the ready line! Move it out move it out move it out!" Leporidae urged at the top of his lungs as he directed everyone outside to the corridor.

Exiting the armory, Amber and Poolsie quickly joined the rest of the security team as they lined up against the corridor bulkhead. Leporidae immediately marched passed, giving everyone a cursory scan.

"Secure that chinstrap BM, I don't care if it's itchy, that's what it's for," he ordered as he walked by. "Button up that mandarin collar Sailor, otherwise you're going to get hot brass going down your shirt. Ensign, with all due respect, where do you think you're going, a Halloween party or off to war? Either way, get rid of that ski mask, it's not going to do you any good and Covies aren't scared of human skulls anyway."

Leporidae walked passed Amber and gave a cursory scan before nodding in approval. Coming to a halt at the front of the line, he spun around. "Security Team! Lock and load!"

Amber immediately inserted a magazine into her rifle and racked the charging handle. The corridor was suddenly filled with all sorts of _clicks_ and _clacks_ as over a dozen rifles, shotguns, and pistols followed suit.

"From this point on, all weapons are at condition one!" Leporidae barked. "That means magazines in, round chambered, safeties on! Got it!?"

"Aye aye Chief!" Amber bellowed at the top of her lungs.

Leporidae gave a single nod in approval. "Alright ladies and gentlemen! As of right now, we are green and very very mean! Stay on the starboard side of the corridor and lets it move out! Let's go, move it move it _move it!_ "

Amber turned and jogged after Leporidae as he led them down the corridor to their assigned defensive position. As they ran, they passed a number of Navy and Marine personnel, mostly clad in light uniforms, all of whom were retreating back in the other direction. As they jogged down the corridor, Amber could feel the floor slope downwards ever so slightly and she realized they were moving down to the level just below them. It made sense they would have to use the corridors as at this point, the elevators would most likely have been sealed off and rigged to blow.

They reached a spot in the corridor where a number of M72-L combat barriers had been set up in staggered formation. Approximately thirty meters in front of them, there was an open blast door. Just beyond the blast door, Amber could hear the faint echo of gunfire and explosions in the distance.

"Alright Team, set up!" Leporidae barked. "We've got the entire corridor, so spread out! Three shooters per barricade! Check your fields of fire and make sure you're not going to shoot each other in the backs! GM, MT, on me."

He led them to the furthest back barrier that was sitting in the middle of the corridor. At his urging, Amber dropped down into a kneeling position and stuck her rifle into the gun slit that had been cut into the middle of the combat barrier.

"Hold position here. When the Covies break through the blast door, I want you to lay down a base of fire; keep them suppressed while the rest of us pick them off. MT, you a southpaw?"

"Yes Chief," Poolsie nervously replied.

"Okay, cover the left then. It's going to be a bit more difficult for you to support the automatic rifle, but whatever, it's more important you're able to shoot from cover. Take this."

From one of his pockets, he extracted a box of green shotgun shells.

"Frag rounds," he said, answering the unvoiced question. "This station is not big enough to warrant the assignment of actual grenade launchers, so these will have to do in a pinch. MT, your primary focus is to help feed ammo to your GM shipmate here, but if you see the Covenant bunching up, pump a couple of these shells into them to punish them for that."

Leporidae suddenly glanced at the TACPD strapped to his wrist. "You two get set up; I'm going to check on everyone else."

He darted away. Amber watched him run off to the next combat barrier to check on the Sailors setting up there.

"Hey Poolsie, help me get ready," she requested as turned back to her friend. "When I say 'ammo,' give me another mag. And give them to me base plate first, with the bullets pointed forward, okay?"

"Got it."

Amber nodded then exhaled. Bending over, she peered through her sights to check her left and right traverse. She looked up as Leporidae dove back behind the combat barrier.

"You ladies ready?" he asked them as he lifted his assault rifle and did a quick brass check. Unlike the rifle Amber was using, Leporidae was sporting the 'C' model of the MA5 assault rifle.

"Yes Chief," Poolsie replied.

"As ready as we'll ever be I guess," Amber tried to joke, but the waver in her voice betrayed her nerves.

"First time fighting the Covenant?"

"In person, yes Chief," Amber corrected.

Leporidae nodded. "Yeah. Well, word of advice: when the shooting starts, just remember to keep breathing. Sometimes for new guys, when that adrenaline rush hits, it can be pretty shocking. Your heart starts pumping at, like, fifty thousand beats per minute, your pupils dilate and all of a sudden, it's like you've been wearing blinders all your life, but now they've been removed and you can finally see. Your nostrils get filled with the smell of ozone, cordite, and if you're really unlucky, blood, and you get this tingly feeling all over your body cause of all the radiation from the plasma weapons. All of that is happening all at once, and it can be pretty overwhelming, even for veterans. So, keep breathing cause the last thing I need is for either of you ladies to pass out."

Amber and Poolsie exchanged a look at the whimsical expression that had suddenly passed over Leporidae's face.

"Pardon me Chief," Amber began, drawing his attention. "But it almost sounds like you _enjoy_ it."

Leporidae's whimsical look was immediately replaced by a slightly guilty one, and he sheepishly grinned. "Well, let's be clear, there's nothing _fun_ about being shot at," Leporidae quickly informed them. "But the rush of combat, well, there's no denying there's nothing quite like it."

" _Alert! Covenant boarders have broken through the portside airlock on Zero Two Level! Teams Kilo, Lima, and Golf, fall back to secondary defensive positions!"_

" _Security Teams Foxtrot and Hotel, standby to repeal boarders!"_

"Alright, listen up Team!" Leporidae immediately stood up and bellowed. "Covies have taken over level two, which means Marines from teams Kilo and Lima, as well as Security Team Golf will be coming up here to join us! Everyone, hold your fire and try **not** to shoot any of our guys!"

"By the way," he commented as he ducked back down. "Before I forget, make sure you set your headsets to channel 14. In case we need to split up, the two of you will make call sign Oscar 1-1: 1st Section, Team 1. Got it?"

Amber nodded as she set her headset, then turned her attention back to her weapon.

The sounds of machine gun and plasma fire could be heard in the distance, growing stronger and more intense by the minute. As she knelt there, nervously drumming her fingers against her rifle, Amber tensed when she abruptly heard the sound of heavy footsteps coming down the corridor straight towards them. She lifted her rifle, vaguely noticing Poolsie to her left doing the same thing, but before she could do anything rash, Leporidae gently placed his hand on the top of rifle.

"Hold your fire GM, those are friendlies," he told her and Amber nodded in acknowledgement, lowering her rifle as she did.

She nevertheless remained tense until she spotted a crowd of people, wearing a mixture of Navy and Marine insignias, round the corner and start running towards her. They didn't look to be in good shape. A number of Marines had scorch marks on their armor and a couple of the Sailors' rifles were still smoking from the ends of their barrels. At least three guys, two Marines and one Sailor, were being supported by their comrades while one Marine was being hauled along in a stretcher and was currently being attended to by a corpsman.

"Fall in, fall in!" Leporidae called out as the group reached them and began streaming through the combat barriers. He reached out and managed to grab a hold of one of the Marines before he could run by. "Hey Corporal, you part of Combat Team Kilo or Lima?"

The Marine glanced at him and snorted as he rubbed his face and wiped some of the soot away. "Neither. Both. Fuck, I don't know. I think Kilo Team's been completely wiped out and Lima's probably down to half strength. I got to get my wounded out of here before I can figure out who's left."

"Dammit. Alright, in that case, you fall back to the fifth level and get reorganized. We'll handle this!"

The Corporal nodded. "Thanks Chief. Alright Marines! Fall back to zero five level! Let's move!"

"Oscar Actual to Central," Leporidae said into this radio as the Marine retreated. "Combat Teams Kilo and Lima are currently combat ineffective, I'm sending them up to Oh Five Level to get reorganized. Security Teams Golf and Oscar will hold Oh Four Level portside blast doors, over."

" _Copy that Oscar Actual. Out."_

Amber jumped as a Sailor abruptly ducked behind their barrier and dropped to the ground.

"What's going on Chief?" he breathlessly demanded to know.

"Marines are falling back to get reorganized sir. Looks like it's just going to be your team and my team holding these blast doors."

"Shit." The man took off his helmet and vigorously tussled his hair. "Well, we're going to miss their firepower."

"What sort of opposition are we expecting LT?" Leporidae asked.

"Shit Chief, the Covies have got a little bit of everything. Split-lips, Jackals, and a fuck ton of Grunts. No Hunters, thank god because they would have torn this station apart, but we're having enough problems as it is."

"Numbers?"

"Not a clue. Most of the Covenant boarding craft were probably supposed to go to Byzas Station, but Captain Starobin put the station between them and Byzas to try and intercept. So right now we could be looking at just a few Lances, or an entire Legion of Covenant boarders, I just don't know."

"Well, let's just hope we have enough bullets to hold them back then," Amber heard Leporidae mutter under his breath. More loudly though, he said, "Okay. LT, why don't you take your team and set up a second line of defense about halfway down the corridor? We'll leapfrog back as necessary."

"Got it," the Lieutenant said, then got up and ran off.

Amber noticed Poolsie nervously glancing in her direction, and she tried to give her a reassuring smile, but all she could accomplish was some sort of awkward smirk. She turned forward as the sound of the fighting started to grow in intensity.

As the seconds ticked by, Amber tried to think of something, anything, to say to break the growing silence, but her vocal cords seemed to be frozen stiff with fear. Honestly, she wasn't sure why she was so nervous; after all, hadn't she been blasting away Covenant fighters not even thirty minutes ago?

But then again, there was a vast difference between what she had been doing _then_ , and what she was about to do _now._ Amber was a gunner. She'd gone to tech school for it, she'd trained for it, she'd spent countless hour preparing for it, hell, it was even in her rank title. Sit her behind a gun turret, and she knew, for the most part, what to expect.

But this? This was something else entirely. It was one thing shooting at images on a screen; Amber could easily delude herself into thinking she was only destroying machines. It was another thing entirely to be shooting at actual, living things that were close enough for Amber to see with her very own eyes. And that they would be shooting back at her. The thought terrified her, and she was struck with the realization she very much didn't want to die.

The gunfire continued to grow louder and louder. Amber glanced at her two companions to see how they were holding up.

Poolsie was busy chewing her lip, like she always did when she was nervous. She had also extracted a rifle round from one of the magazines and was awkwardly twirling it around between her fingers like it was a really short baton. She stared blindly down the corridor in the direction of the fighting, and Amber could see sweat pouring down her face. In short, she looked as bad as Amber felt.

In contrast, Chief Leporidae almost seemed to be taking a nap. He was leaning heavily against his rifle with his forehead propped up against the buttstock and his eyes were closed. He barely twitched when there was an explosion down the corridor and someone started screaming in pain, only to be immediately silenced by another bloody-sounded explosion.

" _All hands, all hands!"_ Wayward suddenly said over the PA, causing Amber to nearly jump out of her skin. _"Covenant forces have broken through on Zero Four Level! Security Teams Foxtrot and Hotel, fall back to secondary defensive positions! Security Teams Golf and Oscar, standby to engage!"_

"Alright, you heard the word!" Leporidae roared, instantly coming to life. "Everybody, check your weapons!"

Amber anxiously checked over her rifle as, like before, a crowd of people came from around the corner and began rushing towards her position. Unlike before though, these people were all Sailors, and they looked in a lot worse shape than the Marines from before. Also, gunfire continued to ring out, even as the Sailors reached the combat barriers and began to stream pass.

One helmetless Sailor brushed passed Leporidae, who grabbed him before he could get away.

"Hey, MA, who's the last man!?"

The MA turned towards them, allowing Amber to see half the man's face was completely covered in blood, causing Amber's stomach to turn at the sight.

"WHAT?" he yelled, and Amber suddenly realized blood was also gushing out of the man's ears.

Leporidae must have also noticed because he started shouting, "WHO. IS. LAST. MAN?"

"I DON'T FUCKING KNOW!"

"Alright, get out of here!" Leporidae demanded, even as the gunfire reached a crescendo.

Down the corridor, one last Sailor was firing her rifle in the direction she had come from as she backpedaled. Once she round the corner, she turned around and started to dash for safety but before she could even take more than two steps –

 _FWOOZ!_

\- a plasma bolt splattered against the back of her head and she instantly toppled over.

"Wayward, close blast door one five alpha!" Leporidae ordered into his radio and as the door started to close, Amber could see her first glimpse of a Covenant soldier as an entire _pack_ rounded the corner before the blast doors shut with an ominous rumble. She gulped.

"Seal the door," Leporidae ordered. There was a loud _hiss_ and as the lights turned red, the blast doors were sealed. "Well, that should hold them back for about… three seconds? Oscar Team! Standby but don't engage until I give the word!"

Amber bobbed her head in acknowledgement though she doubted Leporidae could see her. She jumped when she felt something touch her and she looked down, only to see Poolsie's hand, which she grabbed and gave a hard squeeze.

 _BANG_

The blast doors shook as something heavy hit it and Amber hastily let go of Poolsie as the sound of a dozen rifle safeties being turned off filled the air. Leporidae immediately raised a closed fist.

"HOLD! Jeez guys, I'll let you know when you can start panicking," Leporidae yelled, sounding more exasperated than anything. Amber gave him a shocked look at his cavalier attitude, a look which he ignored.

Silence filled the corridor.

"What are they doing?" someone finally asked.

"Well, if they have any brains whatsoever, they're probably placing another breaching charge," Leporidae noted. "So keep your head's down."

 _HISSSSSSSSSS!_

A loud hissing noise filled the air and white sparks began leaping from the blast door as something hot began cutting right through the thick Titanium door like it was made of butter. The sparks were so bright, Amber was forced to turn her head away.

 _SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS…_ _ **KABOOM!**_

The blast door suddenly blew apart, throwing metal shards all over the corridor!

" **RAHHHHHHHH!"** _ **FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZFWOOZFWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ**_

Plasma bolts began flying in all directions as Covenant soldiers began _pouring_ from the breach!

" **OPEN FIRE!"** Leporidae roared but Amber was way ahead of him; as soon as she had heard the cry of the Elite, she had pulled the trigger.

 _BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!_

In one trigger pull, Amber emptied half of her magazine. But because she was shaking so much, most of those shots ended up going straight into the ceiling, missing everyone. Her head spinning but mindful of what Leporidae had mentioned, Amber took a deep breath, pushed her free hand on the top of her rifle, and pull the trigger again.

 _BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!_

This time her burst was on target, or at least she assumed it was. It was a little hard to tell. So many things were happening at the same time. Plasma bolts were flying towards her, filling the air with colorful lights. Machine guns were going off next to her head, drowning out all other noises. The acrid scent of melted metal was filling her nose on top of other things. And she found she couldn't stop trembling. So many things were happening all at the same time, it was so overwhelming, and Amber was having a hard time focusing. So even though the Covenant were barely thirty meters away, they might as well have been three hundred meters away for as well as Amber could see them. At this point, all Amber was doing was shooting at movement.

 _BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMCLICK!_

"Poolsie, ammo!" Amber screamed as she frantically ejected the empty magazine and letting it clatter to the ground.

Poolsie hastily grabbed a fresh mag and handed it over. Amber snatched it and awkwardly shoving it into her rifle, fumbling a couple of times before she could get it in.

"GRENADE! GET DOWN!" Leporidae suddenly screamed.

 _ **BOOM!**_

Amber yelped in surprise as the plasma exploded, causing the hair on the back of her neck to stick up from the static discharge. At the same time, something struck their combat barrier hard before slumping to the ground and Amber looked down, only to see it was a person.

"Man down, CORPSMAN!" Leporidae screamed, grabbing a hold of the man's vest and hauling behind cover. Up close, Amber could see the man was suffering from multiple burns across his face and chest. "GM! Pick up your rate of fire!"

Amber started, and immediately returned to her rifle. Racking the charging handle, Amber pulled the trigger.

 _BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!_

Amber fired an extended burst into the mass of Covenant soldiers crowding in front of her, but she wasn't sure if she hit any of them as she was getting distracted by what was happening behind her. As she watched, the corpsman came running up and immediately started working on the wounded man.

With Leporidae's help, the man was turned over onto his back and his armor was removed. Breaking out a can of biofoam, the corpsman started applying it, causing the wounded man to cry out in pain.

"Hang in there Sailor, I know it hurts but you're going to be fine," Leporidae urged from beside his head. "How bad is it Doc?"

"He's got third degree burns over his arms and face," the corpsman reported. "We need to get him out of here! Do we have a stretcher?"

"Yeah, I'll get one! Golf Actual, Oscar Actual, over."

 _"Go for Golf Actual."_

"LT, I got a man down, I need a stretcher and some bearers over at my position, over."

 _"Roger! I'll send two of my guys over right now."_

"Copy, out."

Leporidae lowered his radio and looked up to see Amber glancing at him.

"GM! Focus fire forward!" he snapped, leaping to his feet.

Startled, Amber quickly ducked down and fired another burst downrange.

"Don't just fire wildly into the crowd!" Leporidae yelled into her ear. "At this range, fire at targets of opportunity! Short steady burst! Don't waste all your ammo in one trigger pull! Here! Shift fire and target that Elite Major on the left! The one in red!"

Amber pivoted to the left and fired at the first splotch of red she saw.

 _BAMBAMBAM!_

"Uh, that's a Jackal, but nice try," Leporidae reported, somehow managing to sound sarcastic despite the plasma flying by their heads. "Go left a notch and bring it up about six centimeters."

Amber hastily adjusted her aim and fired another extended burst at the creature in question and seeing a yellow transparent barrier suddenly appearing in mid-air.

"You're on target! Keep firing!"

Amber laid into the trigger, following the Elite in her sights as he ducked and tried to dodge to the side, but with no cover, there wasn't much he could do. Amber saw a splash of purple liquid squirting out of the Elite's neck just as she felt the bolt on her rifle lock back.

"You're out, reload! MT Pool, cover!" Leporidae roared as he lifted his rifle and began firing downrange. With Poolsie following suit, laying down fire with her shotgun, Amber frantically reached down and ripped out a fresh mag. Ejecting the empty one, she jammed the new mag in, slapped her charging handle and rode it home with the palm of her hand.

"Back up!" she screamed.

"Shift fire right!" Leporidae immediately ordered. "Enemy Grunt carrying a heavy weapon! Fire!"

Aiming her rifle approximately in the direction Leporidae was pointing at, she let it rip, watching as the numbers on her digital ammo counter quickly go down.

"Target destroyed! Shift fire center! Target, enemy Elite Minor, in the blue!"

Amber bite down on her lip as she shifted over to the right. She spotted an alien that seemed to be giving orders and she opened on him, firing three burst of five rounds each in quick secession. Her first burst went who knows where while her second two burst were intercepted by the same yellow bubble as the other Elite.

"Keep firing! Don't let up, you're burning through his shields!"

Amber fired another couple of bursts and managed to see the yellow bubble shatter just before she ran out of ammo again.

"Ammo! Come on, hurry!" Amber hollered as she watched the Elite start to retreat behind his comrades. She felt a magazine get pushed into her hand and she quickly shoved it into her rifle, chamber a round, and fired.

She didn't see the rounds hit, but the Elite pitched forward like he'd been smacked in the back of the head with a hockey puck and disappeared to the ground. Unsure if he was actually down or not, Amber fired a few more bursts in his direction.

"Hey! HEY! Shift fire, you got him!" Leporidae suddenly yelled into her ear.

Amber grunted and jerked to the right, spraying the Covenant down with machine gun fire as she pivoted. As she swept the entire line, she spotted a small creature, probably a Grunt, run up with a small round device in his hand. She turned to engage him, but then her hammer felt on an empty chamber.

"Poolsie, I'm out, I'm out!" she frantically called out but before she could reload, she saw the Grunt pulling his arm back to throw the device. "WATCH OUT, HE'S GOT A GRENADE!"

Leporidae immediately panned over and open fired, blowing the Grunt's head off with a burst from his rifle, but not before the Grunt manage to throw the device in Amber's direction.

"GRENADE!" Amber screamed, throwing herself to the ground and curling herself into a ball in preparation for the explosion. She sensed Poolsie landing on the ground right next to her and Amber could feel her trembling. Or maybe she was the one trembling?

A couple of seconds passed with no explosion, and Amber decided to risk her life finding out why. She lifted her head and looked around, only to see a cloud of a sort of electric blue colored smoke billowing from the device, filling the corridor and blocking the Covenant from view.

"They're setting up a smoke screen!" Leporidae warned. "Trying to get in close so they can engage with melee! We can't let that happen, we got to pull back! Oscar Actual to Golf Actual, Covies are setting up a smoke screen, we're pulling back to your position, break. Oscar 1 to Oscar 2, fall back to secondary defensive positions, now! 1st Section, suppressing fire!"

Snatching up one of the mags from the ground, Amber quickly reloaded and lifted her rifle, but hesitated. With the smoke screen fully in place now, she had no targets, nothing to shoot at.

"GM, fire your weapon!"

"I got no targets!" she yelled back.

"It doesn't matter, its suppressing fire!"

Shrugging to herself, Amber shouldered her rifle and opened up.

 _BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM! BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM! BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!_

All around her, the sailors from 2nd Section were beginning to stream passed her. She did her best to try and avoid hitting any of them, even if it did limit her field of fire somewhat.

 _BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!_

Shells casings showered her as Poolsie unloaded her shotgun into the smoke. To her right, Leporidae twisted his rifle, ejecting his magazine at the same time, and then in the same motion, twisted his rifle back, shoved a fresh mag in and continued to fire. All the while, Amber held down her trigger.

 _BAMBAMBAMCLICK!_

Her bolt locked back and Amber quickly reloaded. As she brought her rifle back up, she hesitated when she saw a number of translucent glowing orange and red circles emerging from the smoke. Spotting the Jackals holding the circles, she instinctively fired on them, but she stopped when all her rounds did was bounce off the circles.

"Covies are setting up a phalanx!" Leporidae bellowed. "MT, load up frags and target the keystone shield! GM, focus fire on the same target! Fire!"

Amber fired again, growling in frustration as her rounds failed to penetrate the energy shield. "They're just bouncing off!"

"That's the point! Keep firing!"

Amber mentally shrugged to herself and fired again. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Poolsie frantically shoving green colored shells into her shotgun. She was having a bit of a hard time as her hands were shaking so much and she kept dropping them, but eventually she got the tube magazine topped off. Lifting the shotgun, she fired.

 _BAM!POP! BAM!POP! BAM!POP!_

Poolsie unloaded into the Jackal's shield, each shell bursting into a shower of sparks as they exploded. The shells, combined with Amber's machine gun fire, quickly sapped the shield of strength before abruptly failing, leaving the Jackal exposed. Leporidae immediately riddled the bird-like creature with holes but before anyone could do anything else, the Jackals quickly shuffled over, plugging the hole. Then they leveled their plasma pistols.

"Everybody down!"

 _FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ!_

Amber dove for the ground as a veritable firestorm of plasma bolts was thrown their way! A sizzling noise and the smell of melting metal and ozone quickly filled the air as superheated plasma struck the combat barriers and started melting through them. Amber saw at least one person getting hit and falling to the ground as if in slow motion, with his face completely burned off.

 _"1, this is 2, we're set!"_

"COVERING FIRE PORTSIDE!" Leporidae immediately roared. "1st Section, fall back starboard side!"

"Come on, get up Poolsie!" Amber yelled, grabbing her rifle with one hand and grabbing Poolsie's arm with the other.

She staggered to her feet and crouch-ran to the starboard side of the corridor as her ears filled with all sorts of _cracks_ and _hisses_ which she instinctively knew were near misses from machine gun bullets. They ran like hell, reaching the spot about halfway up the corridor where 2nd Section was unloading on the Covenant forces behind them.

"Keep going, keep going!" Leporidae ordered as Amber started to turn to help them. "1st Section, fall back to Golf's position!"

A plasma bolt struck the bulkhead right next to Amber's head, throwing her to the ground and causing her to scream out in fear and pain as she was showered with droplets of plasma.

"Amber!" she heard Poolsie cry out, and she felt Poolsie grab her arm and drag her passed 2nd Section and further down the corridor towards Golf Team, who were all taking cover behind another series of combat barriers.

"COME ON, COME ON!" she heard someone yelling and she looked up to see one of Golf Team's men gesturing widely at her. She saw him mouthing a curse before he darted out from behind the barrier to help.

 _FWOOZ!_

A plasma bolt zipped right by her shoulder and nailed the man right in the upper thigh!

"SON OF A BITCH!" she heard him scream as he dropped to one knee.

 _FWOOZ FWOOZ!_

Another two plasma bolts zipped passed Amber. One smack against the combat barrier while the other hit the man dead center in the chest, knocking him over.

"Oh shit!"

Amber slung her rifle over her shoulder and dashed over to the man. She grabbed a hold of his vest and tried to pull him into cover, only to find he was too heavy for her to do it alone.

"Poolsie, help me!"

Poolsie ran over and grabbed a hold of one of his arms. With her help, they were able to pull him to cover.

As soon as they were safe, Amber began checking the man over for injuries. He had a smoking hole in the middle of his chest but fortunately his body armor had absorbed the plasma bolt, turning it into molten slag but otherwise leaving him unharmed. His leg had no such protection though, and now looked like a charred piece of meat. The plasma had burned through his uniform, roasted the flesh underneath, and then melted away a lot of his fat and muscle. The sight caused Amber's stomach to churn and she started gagging as the scent of charred skin hit her, but she managed to keep the contains of her stomach in place as she frantically tried to think of what to do. Her uncle, a UNSC Army combat medic, had once told her the proper steps of addressing such a wound, but at the moment under so much pressure, Amber couldn't remember what he had said.

She jerked in surprise when Leporidae suddenly and roughly grabbed her by the shoulder.

"Let the corpsmen worry about the wounded!" he snapped as he dragged her and shoved her behind the barrier. "Your job is to engage the enemy! Pull out your rifle and standby to provide covering fire!"

Startled, all Amber could do was do as she was ordered. Shoving her rifle through the gun slit, she got ready to provide fire, only to find it was already too late. The Covenant phalanx had charged forward, shrugging off all incoming fire, and once they were close enough, the Jackals had broken formation and pounced on 2nd Section before they could withdraw. The corridor dissolved into a vicious melee fight as 2nd Section desperately fought in hand to hand combat against the Covenant.

Safe and secure several meters behind the fight, Amber lowered her head to her sights but then hesitated. She was not a trained marksman, and the two sides were too close together for her to feel comfortable enough to fire. Yet, as more of her teammates were cut down by the Covenant, she couldn't just sit there and **not** try to help out.

"HELP! SOMEONE HELP ME!"

Amber jerked around and spotted the Ensign with the skull ski mask nearby, laying on his back struggling as a Jackal tried to stab him in the face with an energy dagger. Despite the Jackal's small size, the Jackal was clearly winning as the Ensign just didn't have enough room to leverage his weight around.

"HELP ME!" he screamed as the Jackal stabbed downwards, missed his stab, but still managed to inflict a nasty cut on the Ensign's face.

"Shit!" Amber yelped. She tried to recall all the marksmanship lessons she had received in Boot Camp so many months ago as she switched to semi-automatic and leveled her rifle.

"Hips squared with the target," Amber muttered to herself. "Feet shoulder width apart. Stock pressed firmly against the shoulder. Lean into the rifle. Elbows down. Take a deep breath. Let it out slowly. And -"

She pulled the trigger.

 _BANG!_

The Ensign shoved the Jackal's corpse off him, whipped out his pistol, and shot the body a couple more times.

"Lightly squeeze the trigger," Amber recited with a sigh as the Ensign climbed to his feet and started running to safety.

 _FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ!_

Amber let out a gasp of horror as the Ensign pitched forward, a dozen bright pink needles sticking out from his back. Blood gushing from his wounds, the Ensign extended his arm, as if reaching for help. Then he exploded.

Amber screamed and ducked as blood and guts coated the walls and ceilings.

"Golf Team, OPEN FIRE!"

Letting out a roar of anger, Amber snapped her rifle up and joined the rest of the team as they unloaded on the Covenant. She spotted one Jackal, with fresh red blood coating his lips, and she blasted him several times, filling him with so many holes by the time he hit the ground he was nothing more than a sack of flesh. Pivoting to the left, she spotted an Elite throw a plasma grenade, which adhered to the helmet of one of Golf Team's shooters. The woman screamed in fear and tried to unclip her helmet to throw it away, but the grenade exploded before she could accomplish that, and her headless and torso-less corpse slumped to the ground.

In retaliation, someone fired a couple of slugs into the Elite, disabling his shields, and Amber quickly unloaded on him. Her rounds chewed through his armor and blew off a leg. The Elite dropped to the ground, screaming as violet-purple blood started _gushing_ from his wound. Another Elite ran over and grabbed him, but Amber quickly shot the new Elite, blowing away a couple of his fingers, then turned to the first Elite and put two rounds into his head, feeling her bolt lock back as he toppled to the ground.

Ripping out the empty mag, she tossed it the ground and reached for another one. "Ammo! Poolsie, ammo!"

Nothing emerged and Amber turned to find out why, only to see Poolsie wasn't there any longer. She felt her stomach drop and looked around in a frenzy, only to see Poolsie a couple of meters behind her, running up the corridor.

"Come on Amber, the team's leaving!" she was screaming and Amber suddenly realized she was the only Oscar Team member standing in a crowd of Sailors from Golf Team.

"Hang on! Wait for me!" Amber cried out as she turned and ran.

"Come on Amber, we have to go, we're getting left behind!" Poolsie urged as Amber caught up to her. In front of her, she could see the rest of Oscar Team running through the corridors with Leporidae at the very front.

As she breathlessly chased after them, Amber suddenly became aware of the announcement that was being broadcasted overhead through the PA:

 _"Warning! Covenant boarding craft detected on zero one four level! All crew and ops personnel, evacuate! All available Combat and Security Teams, respond!"_

"That's the food court!" Poolsie pointed out and with a start, Amber realized she was right and for some crazy reason, Amber started wondering if her breakfast from this morning was still sitting there, and if there was a chance she'd be able to have it.

They caught up to the rest of the team as they stopped outside the armory.

"Everybody, you've got thirty seconds to get more ammo. GO!" Leporidae barked.

Spotting Amber and Poolsie running, up he tossed them a bag, one that Amber just barely caught before it smacked her in the face. "GM, I got you covered but MT, go get some more shells and frag rounds."

Poolsie immediately disappeared into the armory as Amber hastily stuffed the new mags into her pockets. As she worked, she took a glance around, realizing for the first time only about half the team was still standing, which completely caught her by surprise. She knew the team had been taking casualties, but she hadn't realized it had been that many. She was suddenly extremely grateful both her and Poolsie had managed to avoid injury so far.

"Alright people, we're moving out!" Leporidae bellowed as Poolsie returned with a bandolier of shotgun shells slung over her shoulder. "Let's go! Move it move it move it!"

Amber let out a mute groan. She wasn't used to doing this much running, especially with so much gear on and carrying such a heavy rifle.

They ran through the station, and the gunfire that had been ringing out behind slowly started ringing out in front of them. As she ran, Amber saw a number of the crew running in the same direction, clad only in light clothing and armed with sidearms, and she realized the situation had to be really bad if Command was throwing everybody they had into the fight.

They were about two compartments away from the food court when Leporidae abruptly stopped and dropped down to one knee. Amber quickly followed suit. Ahead of her, the roar of gunfire could be heard echoing up and down the corridors, kind of like the roar of a waterfall in the distance. She couldn't see anything yet, but it sounded bad.

"Alright Team, listen up!" Leporidae called. He pointed at a bulkhead door nearby. "We're moving through this maintenance corridor here. It should put us about in the middle of the food court, directly inside one of the food vendor areas. The thing is, the maintenance corridors is rather small, so we're going to need to walk in single file. We also don't know if the Covenant have discovered the corridor at all, so we don't know if anyone is in there or not, so maintain your distance between each man and keep your head on a swivel."

Leporidae glanced at the assembled group. "MT Pool!" he suddenly called. "You're on point!"

"What? Why me?" Poolsie immediately protested and Amber shot Leporidae a nasty look, one that he ignored.

"Two reasons," he began as he walked over to the keypad by the bulkhead door and began punching in some numbers. "One: you've got the shotgun. Two..."

The door slid open, revealing that the corridor was not only rather narrow, but also had a rather low ceiling. Low enough that, it was clear Leporidae, who was probably about a hundred and eighty centimeters tall, would not be able to walk through it with having to hunch over.

"You and GM Owain there are probably the only ones who can walk through the corridor without having to hunch over," he finished. "Means, you'll be able to spot the enemy sooner, and react faster than I could."

Amber glanced around and suddenly realized she and Poolsie were not only the only women in the team, but also the shortest ones. She silently let out a curse.

"Ladies, whenever you're ready," Leporidae called out

Poolsie nodded, then took a deep breath and entered the corridor. Amber moved to immediately follow her, but Leporidae stopped her.

"Maintain at least a three to four meter spacing," he ordered, before waiting a few more seconds, than lifting his arm.

"Fuck you," Amber whispered under her breath as she entered the corridor.

Once inside, Amber was immediately struck with the feeling of claustrophobia. The roof was low enough that even for her, the top of her helmet was barely scraping the ceiling, causing her to instinctively duck her head. Plus, the body armor she was wearing made her rather bulky, and she found her shoulders were brushing against the walls, making it rather difficult to turn. There also wasn't a whole lot of room to swing her weapon around, though based on how Poolsie looked, Amber could tell the bullpup design of her rifle was helping to mitigate the issue somewhat. Nevertheless, Amber soldiered on, unwilling to leave Poolsie alone in this mess.

As they made their way through the corridor, the sounds of fighting continued to ring out, though it was rather muted. It reminded Amber of being at the movie theaters and being placing inside a theater next to one that was playing an action film: she could still hear the rumbling and the low end bass reverberating through the walls, though she couldn't make out exactly what was going on.

They continued down the corridor.

 _"MT, take this next left,"_ Leporidae ordered over the radio.

 _"Roger that."_

Poolsie turned the next corner and immediately there was a loud _whack_ and Poolsie was thrown backwards off her feet as she was struck in the chest by an armored foot.

"POOLSIE!" Amber called out in alarm as a Jackal came walking around the corner. "POOLSIE, STAY DOWN! CONTACT!"

Mentally praying Poolsie was alright, Amber leveled her rifle and opened up but before any of her rounds could hit home, the Jackal activated his point defense gauntlet and intercepted the bullets. Bullet holes suddenly appeared in the walls and ceilings as the rounds simply ricochet off as the Jackal's shield was just big enough to fill the entire corridor.

"Keep firing!" Leporidae bellowed. "Don't let him draw his weapon!"

Amber had no intention of letting go of the trigger. Unfortunately, her rifle had other plans as there was a loud _click_ as she ran out of ammo.

"I'm out! Reloading!" Amber called out as she ejected the mag and instinctively looked down to find another one. Before she could even being to reload though, someone grabbed her by the left shoulder and shoved downward, forcing her to her knees. At the same time, an MA5C rifle was placed on her other shoulder.

 _BANG BANG!_

"AHH!" Amber screamed, instinctively grabbing her right ear. Despite her hearing protection, with the muzzle right next to her face, the gunshots were still extremely painful, leaving her gripping her head in pain. Disorientated by the noise, she missed what happened next but the next thing she knew, Leporidae was yelling into her good ear "GM, continue firing!"

She looked up. By the looks of it, the Jackal had tried to take advantage of Amber's momentary inattention by lowering his shield and bring his plasma pistol to bear. Unfortunately for him, Leporidae was quicker to the draw, and had managed to destroy the Jackal's plasma pistol with his first shot, then put a hole in the Jackal's left arm with his second shot. Sadly, the Jackal was able to reactivate his energy shield before Leporidae's third shot could hit home. But with only one good arm and no weapon, there wasn't much the Jackal could do.

Amber jammed a new magazine in and opened up. Brass littered the floor as both rifles unloaded on him, and Amber could see a red hue beginning to appear on the Jackal's shield.

"Keep firing!" Leporidae barked, even as she felt a magazine smack her in the back as he reloaded. "We've almost disabled his shield!"

Behind the shield, Amber could see the Jackal gritting his teeth as he tried to maintain his grip. He started to take a few steps backwards as the impact from the bullets began to force him back, when he abruptly stepped on one of Poolsie's outstretched legs and fell.

At once, Amber released her trigger, least she accidently hit Poolsie, but Leporidae didn't even hesitate. He fired three shots in rapid secession.

 _BANG BANG BANG!_

The Jackal toppled over backwards, three smoking holes in his chest.

"POOLSIE!" Amber cried out, dropping her rifle as she leapt to her feet.

"No, WAIT!" Leporidae yelled, but it was too late. As Amber sprinted down the corridor towards Poolsie, a _second_ Jackal abruptly appeared from around the corner and leveled his plasma pistol. Amber tried to skid to a stop, but in her heart, she knew she wouldn't make it.

 _KABAM! klikt. KABAM! klikt. KABAM!_

Plastic shell casing clattered to the ground as Poolsie unexpectedly lifted her shotgun and unloaded into the unsuspecting Jackal at pointblank range. The Jackal collapsed, nearly torn in half.

Poolsie let out a groan of pain, lowering her shotgun as Amber reached her.

"Poolsie, are you alright?" she frantically asked, unbuckling Poolsie's chest armor to check for injuries. Poolsie batted her hands away.

"I'm okay," she said with a groan. "Just had the wind knocked out of me. Man, with such skinny legs, those Jackals kick a lot harder than you would think."

Amber couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief at that. Grabbing Poolsie by the shoulders, she helped her climb to her feet. As she did, a shadow fell over them, and Amber glanced over her shoulder to see Leporidae standing there. She half expected him to start yelling at her for her recklessness, but he didn't. Instead, he merely handed her back her rifle.

"Don't drop your rifle next time," was all he said. To Poolsie, he asked, "MT. You good?"

Poolsie nodded. "Yes Chief."

"Good. Let's move on then."

Both Amber and Poolsie nodded, and then continued forward.

Walking through the corridor, they didn't encounter any more Covenant soldiers until they reached another bulkhead door similar to the one they had to open in order to enter the corridor in the first place. While Amber covered her, Poolsie cautiously palmed the door controls, causing the door to slide up and reveal –

Nothing. Nothing but an empty storage room.

"Alright, food court should just be on the other side of this wall here," Leporidae reported in a loud whisper as they filed out of the maintenance corridor and moved to the door on the far side. "Once we go through that door, we'll be emerging from a food stall with only the counter for cover. So keep low, got it?"

"Got it," Amber muttered, along with everyone else.

"Right. Get ready..."

Leporidae thumbed the door controls and the muffled sounds of battle that had been accompanying them for most of the journey suddenly exploded into full force. The entire food court was a firestorm of lights and sounds as plasma and tracers crisscrossed the span of the room, smashing and burning their way through furniture and walls. Most of the Covenant fire seemed to be coming from their starboard side, while most of the UNSC fire seemed to be coming from their port side.

Within the food stall itself, there were already three men occupying the space behind the counter, two Sailors and a single Marine. Amber recognized the Marine as Lance Corporal Tassano, the man who had originally collected her from the fire control center, and the Sailors as the two men that had greeted them when they had first emerged from the elevator on the fifth level.

"LET'S GO!" Leporidae yelled, before dashing over and sliding behind the counter.

A couple of plasma bolts splashed against the ceiling of the store, causing a light to explode, throwing sparks in all directions, but it was clear those were stray shots and no one was specifically targeting them directly. Still, the sight was enough to encourage Amber to hurry up and she sprinted over and slid into cover behind the counter.

"Hey! I know you! What's up?" Tassano cheerfully greeted as Amber landed on the ground next to him. She watched as he lean over the counter and fire a couple of shots from his rifle in the direction of the Covenant.

"Cut that shit out Lance Corporal. We don't need to draw Covie fire any more than we already have!" the CWO snapped.

"Sir!"

"Chief Warrant Officer Hooker!" Leporidae called out, drawing the attention of the CWO. "What am I looking at sir?"

"Ah, it's a fucking mess Chief!" Hooker snapped. "Covenant boarding craft punched a hole through the bulkhead walls on the aft side of the mess hall and started shitting out infantry like they had Taco Express last night. Combat and Security Teams responded right away to contain the situation, but not before some Covenant patrols made it out and into the corridors."

"Yeah, I know sir! We encountered one back inside the maintenance shafts!"

Hooker grunted. "The point is Chief, the Covies were still able to set up some sort of defensive position to protect their LZ. My EOD team was trying to work our way around the flank and take them out with explosives, but we've run into a lot of resistance, and we don't have enough firepower to punch through! Think you could lend a hand?"

"Course sir."

Amber could see Leporidae glancing over the counter and quickly study the area in front of them before ducking back down. "Sir, it looks like we've got a lot of tables and booths we can use for cover in front of us. If we split up into two groups, we can do a bounding overwatch and leapfrog until we get close enough to engage!"

"Sounds good to me Chief!" Hooker replied. "How about I take one team, and you take the other?"

"You can take my 2nd Section sir! I just need one of your techs!"

"Lance Corporal Tassano!" Hooker immediately bellowed. "You're with Chief Leporidae! Chief, you give me covering fire, I'll bound first!"

"Copy that sir! 1st Section, on the line! Make ready!"

Amber quickly positioned her rifle on the top of the counter.

"Covering fire!"

 _BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!_

Amber joined the rest of her section as they emptied their magazines. Brass clattered to the ground like some sort of strange rainstorm, and the Covenant fire seemed to slacken in the face of such an intense barrage.

"2nd Section, go go go!" Leporidae yelled.

Amber reloaded as 2nd Section climbed over the counter and dashed to the nearest piece of cover

 _FWOOZ!_

"AAAAHHHHHGGGGG!"

A plasma bolt struck one of the sailors from 2nd Section in the stomach as he started vaulting over the counter. He collapsed, gripping his stomach and screaming in pain.

"Son of a..!" Amber yelped. She grabbed a hold of the man and pulled him to the ground. "Corpsman!"

The corpsman came running up and Amber quickly returned to her rifle, firing in quick bursts as more and more plasma began pelting the area around them.

"1st Section, move!"

Amber planted her free hand on the counter and tried to shove herself up, but with her armor on, she was a lot heavier and a lot less flexible than she was used to, so she didn't quite make it. Fortunately Tassano was standing beside her and was able to grab the back of her vest and help push her up. She dove over the counter, painfully landing on the tiled floor on the other side, but quickly picked herself up and ran for cover. As she moved, she abruptly realized the food court's ceiling was still on, depicting the space outside and giving her, her first clue as to how the battle outside of the station was going.

It didn't look good. Covenant small craft were swarming all over the place, a disturbingly high number of gutted UNSC warships were filling the void, and dozens of stations and platforms had already been knocked offline. Byzas Station was still operational, with anti-aircraft fire blazing in all directions, but her hull was covered in so many purple hulls, it kind of remind Amber of the fly infested corpses she had seen in nature documentaries.

 _WHAM!_

A concussion shell slammed into the table in front of her, and Amber instinctively lifted her hand to shield her face from all the splinters. She dove behind a nearby booth as another shell streaked by.

"1st Section, cover!"

Leaning around the booth, Amber fired in the direction the concussion shells had come from, but with all the smoke and the confusion, it was a little hard to tell how effective it was.

"GM, what do you see?" Leporidae yelled from beside her.

"Nothing!" Amber admitted. "There's too much smoke!"

"Move! Let me see!"

Amber gratefully switched places with Leporidae and found herself beside Tassano, who was busy tinkering with a small device.

"What's that?"

"A bomb," he yelled back.

Amber reflexively jerked back in surprise. "Should you be messing with that right now?" she asked as a plasma bolt splashed against the top of their booth.

"Probably not," Tassano admitted. "But I'm not sure it's going to go off!"

"How can you not know!? Aren't you EOD?"

"Exactly! It's in my job title, explosive ordnance _disposal_ , not construction!"

 _"THE COVENANT ARE RETREATING!"_

"What?"

Amber leaned over the booth. Sure enough, all Covenant forces were slowly retreating, breaking away in small groups and falling back to their boarding craft.

"All personnel, attack!" Leporidae roared and Amber immediately opened fire.

She sprayed down a cluster of Grunts a few meters away, catching one in the lower back and sending him sprawling to the ground. She turned and fired at a Jackal who was doggedly holding his position, catching him a flanking position where his shield wasn't able to extend far enough to protect his sides. To the left, she could see shells from Poolsie's shotgun hitting an Elite Minor, causing his shields to light up, and she panned over to lend her support. Her bolt locked back and Amber instinctively reloaded.

"Security Team Oscar, advance!"

Amber joined the rest of the team as they vaulted over the booth. As she did, they were a brilliant white flash and she instinctively dropped to the ground for cover. It took her a few moments to realize the flash came from outside and not around her, and she looked up to see -

"Oh my god..." she gasped in horror.

Outside, Byzas Station was slowly falling part as explosions ripped up and down the station's hull. Covenant boarding craft and UNSC escape pods alike were launching off the station's hull at a frantic pace, trying to get off the doomed station.

"LOOK! BYZAS STATION IS GOING DOWN!"

The battle seemed to have been forgotten as all eyes turned upwards to watch the station as it disintegrated. Amber found herself gripping her mouth in terror. A station like Byzas had a crew of over a thousand Sailors and Marines...

Explosions continued to ripple across the station's hull until one final and massive explosion ripped the station to shreds. A visible, spherical shockwave could be seen emanating from ground zero, rippling outwards and expanding at a rapid pace, and Amber felt a sinking sensation as she realized the wave was headed straight for Wayward. There was no way to avoid it, and there was only one thing she could do.

 _"ALL HANDS, BRACE FOR IMPACT!"_

The wave slammed into the station, knocking the entire structure out of orbit and sending it tumbling. The shockwave also slammed into the Covenant boarding craft, tearing them apart...

...and leaving a massive hole in the station's hull.

"AHHHHHH!" Amber screamed in terror as all the oxygen in the room instantly began getting sucked out, causing a hurricane of wind to blast through the room! She could feel the suction pulling her in and she tossed her rifle away, watching it instantly go flying towards the breach as she grabbed a hold of a nearby table. Behind her, the Covenant infantry who hadn't made it to their ships in time were immediately sucked, kicking and screaming, out of the hole!

 _"BREACH! WE HAVE A HULL BREACH!"_

Panic was filling the room as people were screaming, alarms were blazing, and above all, the howl of the wind that was spelling out their doom filled the air. Amber desperately tried to find her footing, only to have her boots slip along the metal floor as they began to get sucked out from underneath her. Abruptly, they gave way and Amber quickly hugged her table as she found herself perpendicular to the breach! Only a few seconds had passed, but Amber found she was already losing her grip as she desperately tried to fight against the vacuum of space itself! Where the hell were the emergency bulkhead doors!?

Suddenly Amber felt the table move, and she glanced down in horror to see the table base was slowly getting ripped out the floor.

"LADY, HANG ON!" She heard Tassano scream as he reached out to grab her.

"LOOK OUT!" she screamed, and Tassano turned around only to take a chair to the face. The blow completely knocked him off his feet and Amber tried to grab him but she was too late and she could only helpless watch as he flew right past her and straight towards the void. Then she felt it.

 _SNAP._

The table abruptly gave way and Amber found herself flying backwards! She screamed and clawed at the floor, trying to get a handhold but finding nothing...

Abruptly Amber came to a sudden stop as someone grabbed a hold of her arm!

"GOT YOU!" Leporidae yelled and she desperately reached out and tried to grab onto his sleeve.

"HOLD ON GM! HOLD ON..." he urged but Amber could already start to feel herself growing weak as oxygen deprivation began to affect her. Her head started spinning as the air in the room grew thinner and thinner.

"GM, HANG ON! WE ONLY NEED TO WAIT IT OUT FOR A FEW MORE SECONDS BEFORE THE PRESSURE EQUALIZES!" she heard Leporidae scream, but he sounded like he was very far away. She felt her grip weakening as every molecule in her body started screaming out for more oxygen, and the lights started to fade.

"GM! HOLD ON!"

"JUST! HOLD! ON!"

* * *

1\. As far as I can tell, neither "Combat Team" nor "Security Team" are official US military unit types. They are, however, both used in the Halo video games, most prominently in the first Halo game during the first level, _The Pillar of Autumn_ , where Cortana and later Captain Keyes directs them over the PA to help Master Chief repeal the Covenant boarders. Both Halopedia and the Halo Wikia have an article on "Combat Team" and defines them as a UNSC Marine Corp unit composed of two Marine squads, but there is no article on "Security Team." For the purpose of this story however, I'm going to define them as the following:

Combat Team: a UNSC Marine Corps unit generally consisting of two Marine squads, for a total of anywhere between 16 to 24 Marines. This term is only used to refer to Marine units that are assigned to UNSC Navy installations and ships as security.

Security Team: similar to a Combat Team above, Security Teams are different in that they contain Navy personnel instead of Marines. Permanently staffed with sailors who hold the Master-at-Arms rating, they are also staffed by sailors of other ratings who just happen to be pulling security duties at the time.

A master-at-arms, by the way, is the Navy equivalent to Military Police in the Army and Marine Corps, as well as Air Force Security Forces.

2\. Decks and Levels: Based on my research, there are two ways of referring to "floors" in the Navy. First off, the "Main Deck" or "First Deck" refers to the floor that runs the full length of a ship. It's not necessarily the uppermost deck and in a warship like the ones the Halo series have, I'd imagine the main deck would be the one right in the middle of the ship. Because of that, there are floors above and below the main deck. The floors below the main deck are referred to as "Decks" and numbered sequentially, i.e. below the first deck would be "Second Deck," "Third Deck," and so on as you continue downwards. Above the first deck, they are referred to as "Levels" and identified by a leading zero followed by the number, which is also sequential. In speech, the zero can either be referred to as "zero" or "oh." So, for example, the next floor just above the main deck can be referred to as "Zero Two Level," or, "Oh Two Level."

This is only a simplified version by the way, it gets a lot more detailed but I don't think it's going to be necessary to know any more than that.

3\. In the game, the MA5B is actually an assault rifle, not an automatic rifle. However, with its sixty round magazine, high rate of fire, and bad accuracy, it made more sense to me if the rifle was more a specialized light machine gun/squad automatic weapon similar to the B.A.R and Bren gun of WW2 fame and of the RPK and M27 IAR of modern times, as opposed to just a regularly issued assault rifle. Just for the sake of it, I wrote a little history excerpt of the weapon, and I thought about attaching it here, but given how long this chapter is already, I think I'll save it for some other day.

4\. Similar to how the real-world Benelli M3 and the Franchi SPAS-12 work. Technically unlike their depicting in Hollywood, these shotguns are actually intended to be used in semi-automatic mode, with pump-action operation designed to be used only when firing less-than-lethal shells like rubber bullets or bean-bags.

No shotgun like this appears in the Halo games or media, but I figured the UNSC military had to have at least one semi-automatic shotgun in their arsenal. I chose the M90 shotgun (the shotgun that appears in the first three Halo games) because it's the only shotgun that looks to me that could actually support such a feature.

(Edit 3/29/19: Original version of this chapter had this semi-automatic shotgun, but after some thought, I realized I couldn't remember why I wanted the UNSC to have a semi-automatic shotgun in the first place, and it didn't play much of a role in the chapter, so I decided to stick to canon with this and have since removed it from the story.)


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

 **High Orbit, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
1000**

 **Zelda**

 _"ATTENTION ALL CALL SIGNS, BYZAS STATION HAS FALLEN! I SAY AGAIN, BYZAS STATION IS GONE! ALL UNITS, HOLD THE LINE!"_

The general wide transmission washed over Zelda, but he could barely give it enough attention to truly comprehend what was being said as he was currently having problems of his own.

 _"WARNING, INCOMING PROJECTILE. WARNING, INCOMING PROJECTILE,"_ his computer chimed.

"Flares," he spat, then threw himself into a spin as white hot magnesium flares began ejecting from the rear of his aircraft. Unfortunately the needlers chasing after him weren't so easily fooled, bypassing the flares entirely and following in Zelda's wake.

"Okay, you think you can take me on motherfucker!" Zelda angrily yelled. "You think you can shoot me, 1st Lieutenant Zelda Kuang down!? You want to see what I'm made of? I'll fucking show you what I'm made of!"

The aircraft he was fighting against, a Type-29 "Vampire," obviously didn't respond but instead opened up with its side mount plasma cannons. Zelda deftly dodged around a hunk of space debris and sped towards cover.

"Cover" in this case was the burnt out hulk of what used to be an Air Force attack transport(1). The ship had been hit several times by plasma torpedoes, boring holes through the armor and forcing the crew to abandon it. Unfortunate for the crew, however it was something Zelda could use to his advantage right now.

Flying through one of the breaches, Zelda thankfully found himself inside the ship's empty hanger. Being just a bit smaller than the size of his Broadsword, the Vampire could have easily followed him in, however the Split-lip pilots decided to remain outside and unload on the hole, as if they expected Zelda to turn around and fly out the same way. Which, to be fair, was what any sane pilot would have done. Fortunately for Zelda, he was anything but _sane_.

Punching his forward facing thrusters, Zelda came to a halt before he crashed into the far wall, then did a full ninety degree turn to the left. Prior to entering the wreck, Zelda had already mapped out where all the hull breaches were, and he immediately sped to the nearest one that was large enough for his fighter to fit. As he flew through the burnt out corridors, he was confront with clear evidence that not all of the transport's crew had been able to escape, but he ignored the frozen bodies that smack against his canopy and focused on flying straight.

Emerging from a breach in the front of the transport, Zelda immediately executed a full one hundred eight degree flip and found himself confronted with the Vampire's underside, which was still busy unloading his weapons on the hole Zelda had entered through.

"What up dickwad?" Zelda sneered, then promptly opened up with his weapons.

He fired a spread of missiles to burn through the Vampire's shields, then unloaded with his autocannon, blowing up the fighter before the pilots even had a chance to react.

"Dumbasses," Zelda muttered to himself as he banked away and started looking for Bellum and Odessa.

 _"Zelda, INCOMING TWELVE!"_

Zelda jammed on his forward thrusters and stopped his fighter just in time as a plasma cannon bolt rocketed past in front of him and slammed into the side of the attack transport, blowing another hole into the wreck. Zelda gritted his teeth as the shockwave hit, tossing his small fighter around like it was a toy, and he frantically punched in his thrusters to try and get on the other side of the wreck. Stray plasma cannon shots aside, this side was getting crowded with all these warships and sitting in a crossfire was no place for Zelda to be.

Doing a half barrel roll to the right, Zelda flipped over the wreck and into its shadow. His proximity alarm pinged, causing him to tense up, but it was only Bellum and Odessa.

 _"6, you good?"_ Bellum asked.

"Just got my feathers singed, but I'm good."

 _"Good, because we just got cleared hot to engage that corvette. Stack up on me! Longswords will punch a hole for us, all we got to do is hit it! Understood?"_

"Yeah, all we got to do is stick it in the right hole, right?" Zelda glibly noted.

 _"Something I hear you have problems with sometimes,"_ he heard Odessa mock.

"Shut the fuck up Odessa."

 _"Alright, standby to execute on my mark,"_ Bellum ordered, clearly ignoring the exchange.

 _"Omega Leader, this is Guillotine 4 and 9, we are beginning our attack run, over."_

 _"Copy that Guillotine, we're right behind you. Omega 5 and 6,_ _ **EXECUTE**_ _!"_

Zelda immediately banked to the right and dove, following Bellum and Odessa as they launched themselves towards their target, a Covenant corvette some three hundred kilometers below them. Ahead of them, Zelda could just barely make out the two Air Force Longswords from Guillotine Squadron just beginning to pull out of their own dives.

A series of missiles slammed into the corvette as the Longswords started their attack. The corvette's shields shimmered, before fading away entirely. At once the Longswords began firing at the same spot on the hull, trying to blast a hole into the corvette's armor for Zelda and the others to exploit. Armored plating and other metals shards were thrown into space as both Longswords fired over twenty shells apiece from their 110mm rotary cannons in the span of less than a minute.

But while the corvette's shields had been disabled, its weapons hadn't and as the Longswords started to pull out of their run, a pulse laser turret suddenly emerged from the corvette's hull and open fired on the Longswords. Guillotine-4 was immediately hit, with the pulse lasers shearing off an entire wing and causing the Longsword to go crashing right into the ship where upon it promptly exploded. The surviving Longsword quickly broke away, shooting off towards the relative safety of the rest of the task force. Annoyingly, the Covenant manning the turret let him go, choosing instead to focus on the approaching Broadswords instead.

 _"Look out, those lasers are still active!"_ Odessa warn as the turret began firing.

Really?" Zelda sarcastically muttered as the area around them began lighting up from near misses. "Thanks Odessa, I hadn't noticed."

 _"Leader, we're not going to be able to pull off our attack if we have to evade,"_ Odessa continued.

 _"I know! 5 break off and take out that turret! 6, with me, we'll continue our run!"_

"Copy, 6 on you Leader."

 _"Copy Leader! 5, breaking off!_

Ahead of him, Zelda watched as Odessa pull out of formation and speed straight towards the pulse laser turrets. At less than a hundred meters away, he fired a series of missiles and then quickly peeled away before the turret could zero in on him.

The turret spotted the incoming missiles and turned to deal with them, quickly trying to shoot them down before they could hit. Explosions lit up the sky as the turret managed to destroy the initial salvo, but unfortunately for the Covenant, they weren't able to intercept them all. Two missiles slammed home, hitting the turret right at the base, ripping the mount right off and launching the turret into space.

 _"Leader, Omega-5, you're free and clear!"_

 _"Copy! 6, standby to release your payload on the target on my mark!"_

Zelda clicked his microphone in acknowledgement as he angled the nose of his fighter directly at the hole the Longswords had created, trusting his targeting computer to determine the most optimal angle of approach. At the same time, he reached up to pull a lever and waited until his HUD indicated his bomb bay doors were open.

 _"MARK!"_

Zelda jabbed a button on his control stick, and a hissing sound filled his headset as a short spurt of pressurized gas ejected the bombs from their hardpoints and out of the weapons bay. Because of his forward momentum, the bombs continued to fall towards the corvette, even as Zelda hastily peeled away.

"Bombs away, bombs away, bombs away," Zelda announced over the radio, shutting his bay doors. He quickly punched in his afterburners to clear the area. Behind him, he could see his four Mark 211 general purpose bombs heading straight for the flaming hole in the corvette's hull, joining the four Bellum had launched only seconds before. Then -

 _ **BABOOMBABOOMBABOOMBABOOM!**_

A series of explosions ripped through the corvette's hull as all eight, one thousand kilogram bombs detonated. The corvette's hull visibly bulged outwards before seconds later, the ship began to decompress, violently venting atmosphere and all manner of debris from the breach. Zelda was too far away to conduct a proper BDA, but he figured the blow must have been critical as almost immediately, all weapons on the corvette ceased fire and all around him, escape pods began to eject from the corvette.

Targeting one of the pods, Zelda promptly blew it away with his main cannon. "God damn motherfuckers," he snarled under his breath.

 _"Command, Omega Flight Leader. I got eyes on eight hits, I say again, eight hits on target 4-Bravo. BDA to follow, break. 5, you got eyes on?"_

 _"Copy. Standby...oh shit! Head's up! Bellum, Zelda, you got Banshees closing in on your six!"_

Zelda glanced over his shoulder. Emerging from the corvette's hanger were half a dozen Banshees, which immediately zeroed in on Bellum and Zelda.

"Where the fuck do all these fighters keep coming from?" Zelda muttered under his breath. "I thought all their fighters had already fucked off to the surface."

 _ **BOOM!**_

Zelda threw himself into a spin as the Banshees open fired and plasma began exploding all around him.

 _"6, we got to peel away from this corvette and get some room to maneuver. As soon as we do, we'll split, you go left and I'll go right, and see if we can't break these fighters up. You think you can handle whatever comes your way by yourself once we separate?"_

"Bellum, do you really need to ask?" Zelda replied as he casually popped his neck and got ready.

 _"Right... 5, standby to cover me! 6, pull up and break off...now!"_

Zelda yanked back on his stick and immediately did a half roll to the left, gritting his teeth as he felt himself get shoved hard against his seat. He quickly glanced at his rear scopes, noticing Bellum speed off with three Banshees in pursuit, following closely in turn by Odessa. Then he was free of the corvette with nothing but open space in front of him and the remaining three Banshees behind him.

 _"WARNING, INCOMING MISSILE. WARNING, INCOMING MISSILE."_

"Chaff!"

Zelda threw himself into a barrel roll and then straight into a dive. Behind him, he could feel the fuel rod cannons exploding as they fell for his countermeasures, but his victory was short lived as, glancing through his rear scopes, he saw the Banshees flying right through the green explosive residue left in its wake. They continued to pursue him, plasma cannons blazing the entire time.

"Aww, you guys think you're clever, huh?" Zelda taunted. "Well, why don't you try _this_ on for size!?"

Without warning, Zelda activated his forward and ventral thrusters at the same time, stopping all of his forward movement and at the same time, throwing his fighter into a somersault. His three pursuers were completely caught off guard and barely had enough time to react. They reflexively and immediately took evasive actions to avoid a potential collision, splitting off in three separate directions, with one banking right, one banking left, and one going straight up and over Zelda's fighter.

As Zelda's fighter continue to flip, one of the Banshees happened to pass right through his crosshairs and without thinking, Zelda immediately fired three missiles and opened up with his cannon. His cannon rounds went flying in all directions as by the time he pulled the trigger, the Banshee was no longer in his sights, but on his HUD, he could see three missiles successfully detaching from their racks and rocketing straight towards the Banshee, who threw himself into a spin to try and evade. Zelda wasn't able to see if the missiles hit, but a light turned off on his HUD indicating his missiles had exploded while at the same time, a small red dot on his radar abruptly disappeared. Then Zelda's fighter finished its three hundred and sixty degree spin and Zelda found himself in the exact same position he had started off, only this time instead of the Banshees being behind him, **he** was behind the Banshees.

Shunting all power back to his main thrusters, Zelda took off in pursuit of the Banshee that had gone to the left. He found the Banshee several hundred kilometers away, trying to take cover behind a hunk of space debris trying to do what, Zelda had no idea but had no intention of finding out.

"What are we doing asshole, playing hide and seek? If I do this, does this mean you're 'it?'" he sarcastically asked out loud before arming a missile and fired it directly at the debris.

The missile slammed into the debris and exploded, completely destroying it and leaving the Banshee exposed once more. Zelda fired a burst from his cannon as the Banshee took off once more, and he watched as the tracers glance off the Banshee's hull as he just barely missed. Snarling in annoyance, Zelda launched himself after the Banshee.

"Oh no, you don't get to leave," he hissed as the Banshee took off in the direction of where the heaviest fighting was taking place.

Bring his crosshairs around, Zelda patiently waited for his computer to obtain a missile lock. The Banshee bobbed and weaved on his screen, but surprisingly did little else to try and evade. It was a little strange. It was as if the Banshee pilot was doing the bare minimum to stay to alive, as if he was trying to keep Zelda's attention on him and rather than anywhere else….

 _ **CLANG!**_

Zelda jerked as a plasma bolt splashed against the left side of his cockpit, fortunately hitting the armor and burning a small hole but doing little else. He reflexively banked to the right as another two plasma bolts streaked by, with a third one skimming along his canopy window and leaving a nasty scorch mark. Glancing at his rear scopes, Zelda spotted another Banshee, the last of the three that had been pursuing him, pulling up behind him, firing his plasma cannons.

"Ah, so _that's_ what you were waiting for," Zelda announced in recognition. "Your fucking wing mate to bail you out, huh? Sorry mate, but that's not going to work on me. Your ass in mine!"

Trusting his armor to hold out, Zelda ignored the plasma that streaked by over his fighter and instead increased his speed as he tried to maintain his view of the Banshee in front of him. The Banshee pilot suddenly started taking all sorts of evasive maneuvers as he realized Zelda wasn't peeling off but in fact, was starting to gain on him, but with an eerie sense of calmness, Zelda was able to match every single one of his moves, all the while avoiding the worse of the plasma coming at him from behind.

In desperation, the Banshee pilot abruptly attempted to do the same Kulbit maneuver Zelda had pulled off only a few minutes ago, but unlike the Covenant pilots, Zelda had been expecting him to do something like that, and was ready for it. As the Banshee began his somersault, Zelda punched in his afterburners and accelerated straight towards the enemy fighter.

"Guns, HE!" Zelda barked as he planted his crosshairs over the almost stalled out Banshee and pulled the trigger.

Zelda could see the Banshee hull get lit up as the rounds punched through the armor before the Banshee abruptly suffered from a critical existence failure and exploded, with Zelda flying right through the remains without a second thought.

Once free of the blast, Zelda immediately checked behind him to see if the other Banshee had followed him through, only to find that the other Banshee was gone. Zelda quickly did a full sweep, checking both his scopes and his radar, but he couldn't find the Banshee anywhere. Nor did his computer detect any locks or incoming. Zelda shrugged. Either the Banshee had been shot down by someone else or the Banshee pilot, upon seeing how easily Zelda had taken out his two comrades, had fled while he still had the chance.

"Omega Leader, Omega-5, this is 6, I'm in the clear. What's your status, over?"

 _"6? Leader. We're secure. Rendezvous with us back in sector three three niner."_

"Copy, I'm on my way. 6 out."

Sharply banking to the left, Zelda rocketed over to sector three three nine and upon spotting Bellum and Odessa flying with the rest of the planes from Omega Flight Squadron in the distance, quickly slipped into formation behind Odessa.

 _"There you are Zelda,"_ Odessa greeted. _"What took you so long? You done messing around?"_

Zelda pushed his talk button, then deliberately waited a few seconds to give the impression that he was thinking. "Yeah, sure, why not?" he finally said.

 _"Good because I need everyone to bring their 'A' game,"_ Bellum informed them. _"We're getting thrown in to go assist the Navy cruiser UNSC_ Canberra _, which is going to put us right in the middle of all the fighting. It's not going to be like our current task of intercepting ships that make it through the line; we're going to be right in the thick of things. There's not going to be any room to maneuver, and there's going to be crossfire all over the place. Tread lightly gentlemen: this is going to get messy. Are you ready?"_

Zelda could feel a feral grin slide onto his face as Bellum spoke but he couldn't help it: he loved a good challenge. "Captain Pax, I don't know about everyone else, but I was fucking born ready."

 _"And there he goes with the fucking clichés,"_ he heard Odessa mutter, and someone else giggled. _"Yeah Leader, 5 is ready."_

 _"Copy. Alright ladies and gents, follow me in!"_

Zelda yanked back on his stick and followed the rest of the squadron as they flew up towards higher orbit where the invading Covenant fleet and what remained of JTF Byzas were locked in one massive melee. It was a giant mess. Warships the size of skyscrapers were exchanging cannon fire at a rapid pace. Multi-colored tracers and plasma bolts crisscrossed through the space in a deadly hurricane of color. Explosions were filling the void, with each blast temporarily adding one more dot to the backdrop of stars. Shifting unseen, but no less dangerous in the dead space between the vessels was the debris cloud, ever growing as more and more ships and stations went dark. The sight was simultaneously terrifying, heartbreaking, and yet, morbidly beautiful in many ways.

Based on what he was seeing through his HUD, the situation was bad: the entire area was just a sea of red. As he drew closer and closer, the red mass started became individual red dots. Among those red dots, he could make out a number of blue dots indicating friendly warships and stations, however they were far few and between. And even those were fading fast.

" _Jesus,"_ someone said. _"The Navy is getting their asses handed to them."_

"Yeah, cause we weren't there to help," Zelda bitterly snarled. It still rankled him, the fact they had been pulled away from Byzas Sector in the first place and redeployed to Cyprium Sector to help out there when they clearly didn't need the assistance. He knew for a fact that was the reason for this entire mess, the temporary reduction in firepower in the Byzas Sector. He also knew, though he didn't have any evidence, the blame could be laid on one man: General fucking Iqbal, that arrogant son of a bitch.

 _"Stay sharp everyone,"_ Bellum commanded. _"_ Canberra _, this is Omega Flight, we are inbound, thirty seconds, over."_

" _Omega Flight,_ Canberra _, divert to heading one zero seven five three! We're detecting inbound boarding craft approaching our port and dorsal stem sides! Most of our AA has gone dark in that area, need you to move in and intercept, over!"_

" _Copy that_ Canberra _, we're inbound, hot. Omega Flight out. Hey, port stem side is the front left, right?"_ Bellum asked.

"Fuck if I know man. Fucking Navy and their god damn weird terms," Zelda immediately replied.

" _Yeah, port side is the left side of the ship,"_ Odessa confirmed.

 _"Copy that. Alright everybody, divert to heading one zero seven five three and move to attack speed! Maintain your spacing and follow me in!"_

They cruised towards one of the blue dots. In the distance, Zelda could slowly see the massive bulk of a _Marathon-_ class heavy cruiser coming into view. With the Byzas ODP having been destroyed, the UNSC _Canberra_ had become the cornerstone of the defensive line as UNSC forces desperately attempted to keep the Covenant back. Just about every single weapon system aboard the _Canberra_ was alive with fire, even as five separate Covenant warships closed in on the cruiser from all directions, each warship eager to be the one to cast the killing blow on the _Canberra._

" _Omega Leader, this is 12! Be advised, I've got visual on over three dozen Covenant boarding craft guarded by about a squadron's worth of fighters en route to the_ Canberra _in sector seven five niner!"_

" _Copy! I got eyes on!"_

Zelda quickly zoomed in on the sector, spotting the mass of Covenant ships in question. It was a large mixture of different ships. The boarding party was mostly made of Type-28 "Tick" boarding craft, with a couple of Type-25 "Spirits" and Type-44 "Phantoms" mixed in for good measure. The entire group was guarded by an entire squadron of Banshees, supported by four Seraphs.

"Hey Odessa, how many infantry you figure are over there?" Zelda asked out loud.

" _Dunno. Ticks hold about, what, eight to ten personnel and then each Spirit and Phantom can hold up to thirty foot soldiers? Figure, got to be about half a battalion over there."_

"Think the _Canberra_ can hold them all off if they get onboard?"

Odessa snorted. _"No."_

"Then I guess we better fucking take them all out before they can get close, eh?"

" _Guess so. 5 to Leader, how do you want to play this?"_

" _We got to separate those fighters away from the main group,"_ Bellum immediately said, _"otherwise, we'll never be able to get in close to those boarding craft! 2nd Flight, consisting of Omegas 3, 7, 8, and 9: move in and see if you can't draw the fighters' attention! 5, 6, and 12, with me. We'll stay in the Canberra's shadow and wait until the fighters get drawn out, then hit them from the rear! Once the fighters are down, we'll zero in on the boarding craft by individual elements from multiple trajectories, and keep shooting until all the craft are down, clear?"_

"Understood Leader," Zelda immediately said.

" _Good. Remember to stay out of the red zones gentlemen, and watch for crossfire! All fighters, move into position and standby to execute!"_

Zelda angled his fighter and followed Bellum as she separated from the rest of the squadron and moved towards the rear of the _Canberra_ , whose bulk would be able to hide the four fighters from the Covenant sensors. As he settled into a holding pattern, he could hear over the radio as the rest of Omega squadron began making their final preparations for their attack.

" _Omega-7, stay close to me, we'll dive down on them from above,"_ Omega-3 was saying. _"Target the Seraphs; take out as many of them as you can on the first pass. Cut through the main group, and we'll see if we can't get most of those fighters to follow. Any questions? Good. Leader, this is 3, we're set."_

" _Copy that. Execute in three, two, one, MARK!"_

Zelda watched as half of the squadron immediately peel away. Firing their afterburners, they speed straight towards the Covenant swarm. The Covenant obviously saw them coming, and through his radar, Zelda could see about a quarter of the Banshees breaking away from the formation to confront them. But before they could get far -

 _"FOX ONE!"_

\- 2nd Flight promptly open fired!

From this distance, all Zelda could see were a number of red dots and vapor trails as each Broadsword fired a dozen missiles apiece. The Covenant deployed countermeasures, but because their formation was so tight due to the need to better protect the boarding craft, the countermeasures weren't as effective as they could have been, and a little more than half the missiles made it through. The shields on all four Seraphs lit up as the missiles hit home. But 2nd Flight wasn't done just yet.

 _"GUNS GUNS GUNS!"_ Omega-3 ordered and all four Broadswords opened up.

Tracers rounds smacked against the Seraph's armor, ricocheting all over the place, but 2nd Flight wasn't necessarily targeting the Seraphs so much as they were spraying the entire mass down. Some of their shells missed the fighters entirely, landing amongst the boarding craft. Zelda was too far away to see any hits, even on max zoom, but he did noticed at least three red dots representing the Ticks disappearing from his radar. Then the Covenant were sent scrambling as 2nd Flight flew right through their formation as each individual boat hastily moved out of the way to avoid a potential collision.

And just like that, 2nd Flight was suddenly in the clear. Instead of immediately speeding away though, they slowed down ever so slightly.

 _"Leader, 3 here. Mission accomplished, we definitely got their attention, over."_

 _"Hang on 3, let's see if any of those fighters actually go for you. Standby..."_

In the distance, Zelda could see the Covenant struggling to return to formation. He specifically focused on the fighter escort, watching as some of the Banshees seemed to waver, as if they were trying to decided what to do. Then abruptly, about half of them fired their boosters and leave the formation.

"There they go," Zelda noted as the Banshees took off after 2nd Flight. "Suckers."

 _"Leader, this is 12. I got eyes on several fighters leaving the formation, but it doesn't look like all the fighters took the bait, over."_

"Say what?" Zelda commented to himself as he zoomed out to bring the entire formation into view. Sure enough, it looked as if only about half the fighters had actually left, leaving about eight Banshees and two of the Seraphs to guard the entire formation. "Hey Bellum, there's not that many of them. We could take them. Hell, I could probably take half of them myself."

 _"That's not the objective Zelda. We need to go after those boarding craft. If we get bogged down in a dogfight, then there'll be nothing stopping the Ticks from boarding the_ Canberra _and destroying it from the inside. 5, 6, how much ordnance do you guys have?"_

 _"5 here. Got about a little more than six thousand kilos left."_

"That's about the same for me boss," Zelda reported.

 _"Okay, here's the plan. 12 and I will move in, engage the rest of the fighters and see if we can't get them to break off. 5 and 6, wait until we're clear, and then engage. Copy?"_

 _"Copy."_

 _"Good. Skeeter? Arm all weapons and follow me in!"_

Outside, Zelda watched as Bellum and Omega-12 peel away from the formation. Firing their afterburners, they took off towards the Covenant, this time approaching the mass from 'below.' At a little over two hundred klicks away, they both opened up with everything they had.

This time, the Covenant didn't even bother with countermeasures and straight up began evading as the missiles rocketed towards them. Like 2nd Flight before them, Bellum and Skeeter started to spray the formation down with cannon fire, but before they could even fire more than a hundred rounds, the Covenant broke loose of their formation and started heading straight towards the pair at max burn. Bellum and Skeeter were forced to abort their run as plasma streaked towards them, and Zelda involuntarily winced as a fuel rod cannon exploded near Bellum, but she emerged no worse for wear. And then suddenly, they were off, with almost all of the Covenant fighters in pursuit, leaving only two Banshees behind to guard the boarding craft.

 _"Well, that worked a lot better than I could have ever predicted,"_ Odessa admitted.

"No kidding. Almost makes you wish we had put some money it, don't you?"

 _"Yeah, except I know you don't have any money Zelda. Anyways, you wanna take the Banshees?"_

Zelda thought about it for a moment. "Nah, you go ahead. I think I've farmed enough kills for today."

 _"Ooo, so generous,"_ Odessa sarcastically said. _"Alright then. Let's do this!"_

As they launched themselves towards the Covenant at top speed, Zelda started searching for targets. They were approaching the formation from above, diving 'down' on the Covenant thus giving Zelda a good view of just about every single boat they had in the formation. Zelda's biggest concern were the ships that could fire back so, with the Ticks being unarmed transport vehicles, he zeroed in on the Phantoms and Spirits.

 _"We might only get one or two chances at this,"_ Odessa warned as Zelda's distance counter quickly counted down. _"So make sure your shots count."_

"Oh, you don't need to worry about me," Zelda cockily replied. "I'm fucking surgical with my missiles."

 _"…Sure. We'll go with that."_

 _ **KABOOM!**_

The area around Zelda lit up as the Covenant Spirits and Phantoms started firing on them, trying to deter them from attack, but Zelda was easily able to avoid the slow firing and slow turning turrets. Ignoring the incoming fire, Zelda focused on obtaining as many locks on as many targets as he possibly could. While he was doing that, at the same time, he reached up and popped open his bomb bay doors so he fully deploy his internal weapon racks. Between them and the weapons mounted on the hardpoints on the top and bottom of his wings, Zelda could potentially fire up to twenty-four missiles simultaneously.

 _"Target locked! Zelda, you're cleared to engage!"_

Zelda squeezed the trigger.

 _ **PSHHHHOOOOSHHH!**_

Two dozen Medusa missiles rapidly departed from Zelda's Broadsword. He hadn't been able to obtain locks for all of them, but the ones that did immediately began zeroing in on their targets. Countermeasures began popping as the Spirits and Phantoms moved to evade but for the Ticks, that simply wasn't an option.

 _ **BOOMBOOM! BOOMBOOMBOOM!**_

The sight of so many aircraft exploding at the same time reminded Zelda of the fireworks displays his parents used to bring him to when he was little. Multi-colored explosions lit up the void and burning hot shrapnel was thrown in all directions, leaving bright yellow streaks in Zelda's vision. Even more color was added when Zelda opened up with his main cannon.

"GUNS GUNS GUNS!"

 _BRRRRTTTTTTTTTT!_

Zelda didn't even bother aiming, he just pointed the nose of his fighter at the largest cluster of Ticks and let it rip. Ticks began dropping out of the sky, their light armor doing little to stop the 30mm armor piercing shells from ripping them to shreds. Zelda saw at least three Ticks go up in flames before a Spirit transport pass through his stream of fire. Without letting up on the trigger, Zelda switched over to the new vehicle, unloading nearly five hundred shells into the Spirit's cockpit. The cockpit exploded, causing the giant, tuning fork-looking vehicle to split in half. Then Zelda peeled away, leaving the entire Covenant formation in disarray.

Preemptively dumping flares and chaff to prevent any potential locks, Zelda sped away, glancing at his rear scopes as he did. The Covenant numbers had been severely depleted yet despite the casualties they had taken, they still continued their journey towards the _Canberra_ with a sense of dogged determination.

 _"Leader, this is 5. We splashed approximately twenty plus enemy aircraft however they are still inbound. Request permission to conduct another pass, over."_

 _"5, it's your call! But be advised, we couldn't retain the attention of all the fighters. You got two Seraphs and possibly four Banshees returning to the formation. ETA, TWO MIKES!"_

 _"Copy that Leader. 5, out. What do you think Zelda? Think we can take out the rest of these guys in two minutes or less?"_

"Like my mother always told me: 'you won't know unless you try,'" Zelda replied with a grin. "Let's do this!"

 _"Well, I think_ _ **my**_ _mother would be very upset if she saw me doing this but fuck it, she ain't here. Lez go!"_

They banked around and headed straight back for the Covenant, coming at them from below this time. This time the Covenant were a bit more prepared for them and almost immediately they began taking fire. Zelda could see his fighter taking minor hits all across his hull, but as Spirits and Phantoms weren't equipped with plasma cannons that were as strong as say, those on a Seraph, the damage wasn't enough to cause Zelda to abort.

 _"Fox one!"_ Odessa declared.

"Missiles away," Zelda confirmed.

Again, two dozen missiles were launched straight at the Covenant. This time, Zelda hadn't bothered with any of the Spirits or Phantoms and instead just focused on the Ticks themselves. Dozens of explosions filled the vacuum as Zelda and Odessa's missiles rammed home.

 _"We got maybe one minute before those fighters return!"_ Odessa warned. _"Make it count!"_

Grunting in acknowledgement, Zelda went tearing after one of the surviving Spirits. The Spirit pilot saw him coming and tried to fire on him, but Zelda was approaching from above where the Spirit's dorsal mounted turret couldn't reach. The pilot began spinning on his longitudinal axis to bring his turret to bear but by then it was too late: Zelda had already acquired a firing solution and fired a missile.

"Guns, AP!"

 _BRRRTTTT!_

The missile hit first, punching a huge hole in the engine compartment. Then the autocannon shells hit, entering through the hole and creating all sorts of havoc inside the engine, including breaching the containment field for the Spirit's plasma conduits. The unstable substance ignited and then -

 _ **KABOOM!**_

\- exploded and Zelda immediately switched targets. He spotted a lone Tick flying away from him and nothing else. With time running out, he just decided to go for it.

"HE!"

The Tick abruptly jerked to the side just as Zelda pulled the trigger, causing almost all of his initial fifty round burst to miss, except for one round. For whatever reason, bad fuse perhaps, the round failed to explode upon impact, but it ended up not mattering. Due to the odd angle of impact, the shell ended up skimming along the full length of the Tick's hull, leaving a deep grove.

Chunks of armored plating began flying off as the Tick began to fall apart when abruptly, the entire craft simply disintegrated, throwing its entire crew into the void at high speeds. Zelda could see almost an entire squad's worth of Covenant infantry, all gasping for air and waving their limbs around helplessly as they flew through the cold vacuum of space. He couldn't help but sympathetically wince at the sight: while Zelda was all for the total extermination of all the Covenant races, suffocating to death was, in his opinion, one of the worst ways to go. That, and being burned alive.

 _"WARNING, INCOMING MISSILE. WARNING, INCOMING MISSILE."_

"Flares!"

 _ **BABOOM!**_

Zelda's Broadsword rocked as the fuel rod cannons exploded right above him.

 _"Head's up! Time's up, we got incoming!"_ Odessa warned.

Zelda glanced at his radar. "Incoming! Banshees! Three of them, twenty degrees!"

 _"Cut to the left, I'll take the leader!"_

Zelda jerked his stick to the left as Odessa fired a quick burst, blowing off the right gravity pod on the Banshee and causing it to spin out of control and go crashing into the wreck of a nearby Phantom.

"Good shot!" Zelda exclaimed, not being able to prevent himself from being impressed.

 _"Yeah, you're not the only surgeon in town!"_ Odessa crowed.

"Bellum said there were two Seraphs inbound. You got eyes on?" Zelda distractedly warned, frantically looking around as he dodged some fire from the Banshees.

 _"WARNING, COLLISION ALERT. WARNING, COLLISION ALERT."_

" _Zelda, incoming below!_ _ **PULL UP!"**_

Zelda yanked back hard on his stick, wincing as two Seraphs passed by so closely, he could feel his fighter get nudged off course by one of the Seraph's shields.

"Ah, there they are," Zelda gasped out as he struggled to recover.

The two Seraphs cut out in front of him and Zelda reflexively fired a snap shot at one of them, only for his missile to get blown up in his face as the Seraph's hard kill APS instantly blasted it out of the sky, forcing Zelda to divert least he get hit by his own shrapnel.

 _"Zelda, head's up, the Seraphs have forced us to split up,_ _ **I NO LONGER HAVE YOUR BACK!**_ _You got both Seraphs about ready to push your shit in! Zelda, you copy!?"_

"Solid copy," Zelda grunted out as he did his best to dodge the fire coming his way. "Sorry. A little. Busy. Where are the Banshees, you got eyes on?"

 _"They're on_ _ **my**_ _six and doing their best to keep me away! Hang on, I just might be able to get past and give you some support!"_

"Negative, you deal with those fuckers and keep them off my back. I'll handle the Seraphs!"

 _"Copy! Be advised, according to Bellum, we might have one potential Banshee still lurking about! Keep your head on a swivel!"_

"That's. Easier. Said. Than. Done!" Zelda said through gritted teeth.

 _ **KABOOM!**_

"Shit!" he snapped as a plasma bolt slammed against his fighter's rear. An alarm started sounded but Zelda quickly silenced it. "Okay you pukes, time to fucking dance."

He threw himself into a canopy roll to a right and then immediately climbed before abruptly jumping into a lag roll and then diving into an outside loop, trying to shake the Seraphs off his tail. Unfortunately, it didn't take; glancing at his rear scopes, Zelda could see both Seraphs barreling after him, undeterred.

The problem was the distance; at a little under fifteen hundred meters away, the Seraphs were a bit too far away to really be fooled by any of Zelda's combat maneuvers. Yet conversely, the Seraphs were too _close_ for Zelda to simply punch in his afterburners and try to outrun them as they would simply lock onto the heat from his engine exhaust and send a dozen fuel rod cannons his way. In fact, probably the only reason why they hadn't done that already was because at this range, the radiation from the fuel rod cannon explosions would play hell with their shields, leaving them vulnerable to attack from other UNSC forces.

Zelda tried to throw himself into an inverted cobra roll, but for his troubles, he almost flew straight into a bolt of plasma one of the Seraphs threw his way. He let out a growl of annoyance. He was beginning to wish he was back fighting in Tenedos' rings. At least over there, there had been plenty of cover he could have used to break line of sight and gotten behind his pursuers. He was half tempted to try and executing the same Kulbit maneuver he had pulled on the Banshees from earlier, but the problem was, unlike the Banshees, all the Seraphs had to do was ram him. With their armor and shields, they would survive; he wouldn't.

"Come on, let's go, let's go!" Zelda urged as he tried to think of a way to lose these Seraphs.

Time was running out for him. With the amount of plasma the Seraphs were throwing at him, which they could do because unlike his rotary cannon, plasma cannons didn't run out of ammo, they would eventually hit him through sheer saturation. But every move he did, every maneuver he pulled, somehow the Seraphs were right there, matching it. Zelda didn't want to admit it, but he was beginning to think he might need some help.

Of course, a quick glance at his radar showed there weren't any friendlies available. Odessa was busy with the Banshees, Bellum and Skeeter were engaging the other two Seraphs and he couldn't even find 2nd Flight. The only friendly contact within range was the _Canberra_ , and she was still fighting off the Covenant warships...

A thought suddenly occurred to Zelda and he glanced in the _Canberra's_ direction, or more specifically, the crossfire that was taking place between her and a nearby Covenant destroyer, and Zelda suddenly realized how he could lose the Seraphs.

"Oh, this is a bad idea, even for me," Zelda groaned but unfortunately, it was the only option he had. "Shit! Alright, fine! You cunts want to play follow the leader? Let's see how far you're willing to take it!"

Throwing himself into an inside loop followed by a very tight rudder roll, Zelda took off in the direction of the _Canberra_ , with the two Seraphs following close behind.

"Okay okay, I can do this," Zelda tried to encourage himself as he barreled towards the fighting and an alert flashed across his screen, warning him he was about to enter a red zone where the chances of a friendly fire incident were greatly magnified. He glanced behind him. The Seraphs were still following him, undeterred.

"Oh, this is soooooo not going to end well," Zelda groaned. "Oh shiiitttttt!"

He entered the red zone.

At once all sorts of alarms began going off!

 _"WARNING, INCOMING MISSILES."_

 _"...INCOMING PROJECTILE."_

 _"WARNING, COLLISION..."_

 _"...INCOMING..."_

 _"...SAMS DETECTED."_

 _"PULL UP... PULL UP..."_

"Shut up shut up shutup!" Zelda snapped as he concentrated on trying to not get hit.

Anti-ship missiles the size of school buses rushed passed him on their way towards their target. Violent blue plasma bolts capable of engulfing his entire fighter in one go whipped by, headed in the opposite direction. 50mm shell fire exploded near him, pelting his fighter with shrapnel, and a pencil-thin beam of pure energy lanced by so close to him, Zelda swore he could feel the heat even buried under several layers of Titanium and plastic, as well as wrapped in his pressurized vacuum suit. Zelda ducked, bobbed, and weaved as the barrage continued, unabated, as both ships did their best to kill each other, their gunners completely unconcerned or unaware of the three small fighters foolish enough to wander into their crossfire. And it was still three fighters: glancing at his rear scopes, Zelda could see both Seraphs were still after him, struggling slightly to avoid getting hit in their less maneuverable fighters, but still persistent in pursuing him.

Zelda wasn't entirely sure why. From the way they stuck to him, it was almost as if he had somehow done something that had personally offended them, but he couldn't think of what that something might have been. Well, aside from killing all the boarding craft they were supposed to have been protecting. And possibly killing all their brothers. And continually resisting their attempts to shoot him down in revenge.

Hm...

At any case, it was clear this wasn't working. Zelda needed to mix things up.

"Time to up the ante I guess," Zelda muttered. With a reluctant sigh, he banked hard to the left and headed straight for the front of the _Canberra_. As was tradition for most naval ships, most of the _Canberra's_ heaviest weapons were mounted towards the front of the ship, including her two MACs. Here, the firing was even more intense as the _Canberra_ was splitting her fire between two ships, a Covenant light cruiser and another corvette.

"Here goes nothing..."

 _ **BOOM!**_

Immediately Zelda was forced to jerk to the side as an Archer missile abruptly exploded nearby, having been destroyed by Covenant pulse lasers before it could even get halfway to its destination. Rolling to the right, Zelda was nearby struck by a plasma torpedo which, while it wasn't capable of locking on to his fighter because of his relatively low magnetic signature, was more than enough to completely incinerate him.

The plasma torpedo streaked passed him and then abruptly executing a full ninety degree towards him. Before he could even begin to question how, he noticed a magnetic decoy the size of a small box truck that had been launched by the _Canberra_ floating past him from behind and he slammed on his forward thrusters, bring himself to a stop as the plasma torpedo past right in front of him and zeroed in on the decoy.

A pair of needlers from who-the-fuck-knew-where, as most Covenant warships didn't carry needlers, shot over his shoulder and Zelda reflexively threw himself into a dive only to fly right through the vapor trail left behind by a volley of Archer missiles, temporarily blinding him. He yanked back on his stick and climbed out of the exhaust, only to blink as there was a sudden flash of light in front of him. It took him a few moments to realize that had been the light reflecting off a MAC round and it suddenly occurred to him he had almost stumbled into the path of a pair of MAC rounds the _Canberra_ had just fired.

Glancing downrange, Zelda noticed the light cruiser the _Canberra_ had been fighting against was now a flaming wreck and was slowly falling apart even as she was struck amidship by another volley of missiles. Still, even in her death throes, the cruiser fired off a quad of plasma torpedoes, one of which was able to score a direct hit on the _Canberra's_ hull.

The torpedo exploded and even flying several dozen kilometers away, Zelda could still feel the shockwave from the explosion. He glanced at the _Canberra_ to see a piece of shrapnel about the size of a bumper car get hurtled in his direction traveling at, from what it appeared to Zelda, damn near the speed of light. He quickly spun his fighter but fortunately his judgement had been a bit off and the shrapnel didn't even come near him.

 _ **FWOOZ FWOOZ!**_

"OH COME ON!" Zelda yelled, trying to do best to avoid the plasma the Seraphs sent after him. "Are you fucking kidding me!? Why the fuck are you two morons still after me!? You guys are crazier than I am!"

He glanced through his rear scopes, trying to figure out if there was another way to lose his pursuers when -

 _ **BOOMBOOM!**_

One of the Seraph's shields lit up as he was struck by AA fire from the _Canberra_! The Seraph quickly banked to the side but abruptly there was a flash of light as a Covenant excavator beam speared the Seraph right in the cockpit. The Seraph survived, intact, but it was clear no one was steering the fighter anymore as it continued flying straight, until it blundered right into a plasma torpedo and exploded.

"HAHA! YES! TAKE THAT YOU STUPID SPLIT-LIP BASTARD!" Zelda cheered. He noticed the other Seraph visibly wavering, before he hastily turned tail and started heading for the edge of the crossfire zone.

"OH NO YOU DON'T!" Zelda roared. "YOU DON'T DRAGGED MY ASS OUT HERE AND THEN GET TO LEAVE!"

The Seraph ignored him as he headed for the safety of open space at max speed. In a blind fury, Zelda took off after him. Without bothering to try and obtain a lock, Zelda just began unloading all his weapons on the Seraph. All sorts of Medusa missiles and 30mm shell fire, which looked absolutely pathetic when compared to the arsenal the _Canberra_ was firing, were launched in the direction of the Seraph. More than half of them missed, while at least another quarter was destroyed by the crossfire. The remainder of his rounds though struck home and Zelda could see the Seraph's shields light up.

"How do you like that!?" Zelda snarled, nailing the Seraph once more and watching as his shields disappeared. He pulled the trigger once more, only for his screen to flash red. He wasn't given any time to diagnose the problem as before him, the Seraph was unexpectedly struck by a series of pulse laser and the fighter dissolved into a ball of fire.

"Hey, that was my kill!" Zelda weakly protested, mostly out of habit, as he was distracted by looking for a way out. With both Seraphs gone, he no longer had a reason to hang around in the red zone, but getting out wasn't as easy as getting in. With the destruction of the Covenant light cruiser, Zelda would have thought the fire would have slackened but if anything, it actually intensified as the _Canberra_ was free to focus fire on the remaining warships.

"Oh boy, you really fucked up this time Zelda," Zelda told himself as he launched his fighter towards what appeared to be open space, only to have to divert when a MAC round passed right through. "I fucking told you this was a bad idea!"

Doing a tight loop, Zelda started rocketing upwards, dodging lasers and shells. The fire seemed to intensify as he sped away and it started to feel like every single gunner on both ships was aiming directly at him, trying to prevent him from leave.

"Come on! You can do it!" Zelda urged his fighter. "Almost... there...!"

Something exploded directly in front of him, so closely, Zelda had no time to react. All he could do was close his eyes as he barreled straight for the blast.

His fighter let out a rumble as the shockwave hit, shaking his fighter so badly he was sure the Broadsword was about to shake itself apart. A loud _tock_ noise filled the air as he was pelted with debris and shrapnel and alarms began screaming in his ears. All Zelda could do was continue to accelerate and pray he would make it...

And then, suddenly, it was all over.

Zelda cautiously opened an eye. When he noticed he was still sitting in his cockpit, and not floating alone in space, he slowly opened both eyes. His fighter was still intact, accelerating through open space, with the red zone and all the crossfire fading away behind him. Somehow, and against all odds, Zelda had not only survived, but survived without suffering from any critical damage.

"I made it," Zelda said slowly in wonder. Then it hit him. "I MADE IT! JUST LIKE I THOUGHT I WOULD! HA! YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKERS! TAKE THAT YOU SOBS! HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW!? _ **"**_

 _PING_ _ **.**_

Zelda nearly shit his pants when his proximity alarm went off. He grabbed his stick and started searching for the enemy contact, only to let out an immense sigh of relief as he realized it was only Odessa.

 _"Dude, did you just fucking come out of a red zone!?"_ Odessa demanded to know without preamble.

Under normal circumstances, Zelda would have tried to play it off like it had been nothing, but honestly his hands were still shaking from the sheer amount of flying he had to do to avoid getting killed, so all he said was, "Yes. Zero out of ten, would not recommend."

 _"I feel that should go without saying. But then again, I remember I'm talking to you,"_ Odessa casually commented. _"Come on, we got to hook back up with Bellum."_

Zelda nodded and followed Odessa to where the rest of the squadron had assembled. Omega-12 and most of 2nd Flight were already there, though Zelda noticed Omega-7 was nowhere in sight.

 _"Zelda, you okay?"_ Bellum immediately demanded to know as soon as she laid eyes on him.

"I'm good Leader," Zelda simply said, still shaking slightly from his ordeal.

 _"Yeah? Your bird looks like shit. What's your ammo and fuel status?"_

Zelda glanced at his HUD and began cycling through his weapons. "I'm black on 30mil, black on Medusa's, black on bombs, and I've only got four ASGMs left," he read out loud, blinking in surprise. He hadn't been paying attention, but that did explain why he hadn't been able to deliver the finishing blow on the last Seraph; he hadn't had anything left to hit him with. "Fuel, I'm down to fifteen percent reserves."

 _"How are you almost Winchester on everything?"_

Zelda thought back to all the Ticks he had taken out, and then all the intensive maneuvering he had to do to avoid getting hit in the red zone. "You probably don't want to know."

 _"...knowing you, that's more than likely true. Omega-6, do you think you could make it back to the_ Trenchard _by yourself?"_

"Affirmative Commander."

 _"Okay then. Omega-6, RTB to refuel and rearm. Everyone else, on me!"_

"Copy. Omega-6, returning to base."

Zelda gratefully turned his fighter around and headed away from the fighting and back towards Actium where the _Trenchard_ was in a hold pattern, positioned in a place where they could easily intercept any ships that slipped through the defensive line. Quickly getting cleared by the control tower, Zelda coasted into the nearest available hanger and cautiously set his fighter down. Immediately his fighter was set upon by a veritable army of maintainers.

 _"Sir, what do you need?"_ the head chief asked as Zelda locked his landing gear in place and opened up his bomb bay doors.

"I need everything!" Zelda warned. "Fuel and ammo! Lots of ammo!"

" _We're on it sir! Alright guys, shake a leg! Let's get this fighter loaded up and back into the fight!"_

Zelda turned away as the airmen began hooking up fuel lines to his fighter and started hauling in all sorts of ordnance into the hanger. His adrenaline rush was beginning to wear off and exhaustion was taking its place; he could feel himself getting a bit light headed. Slapping himself awake as best he could through his helmet, Zelda reached into a pocket mounted on the side of his seat and pulled out an energy drink. Hooking it up to a straw mounted on the side of helmet designed specifically for this sort of thing, Zelda sucked down the contents. Almost immediately, Zelda could feel it working.

"Whoa," he said, feeling pleasantly surprised. "What the hell is in this thing?"

He glanced at the can to see the ingredients, only to find the drink was almost entirely made up of sugar, caffeine, and ephedra(2). Ah, the breakfast of champions.

"That's some good shit," he muttered to himself.

Feeling rejuvenized, Zelda could feel some of his swagger from before returning to him, as well as a sense of urgency. There was a fight going on; Zelda needed to be out there, helping out, and not in here, waiting. He turned to the maintenance crew to see if there was something he could do to hurry them up, but it was clear even to him they were just beginning.

Drumming his hands against his dash, he switched his radio over to his squadron's channel so he could at least keep up with what was going on outside.

 _"Red and Gold Wings should be beginning their run any second now,"_ Bellum was saying. _"Anyone got eyes on?"_

 _"Leader, this is 12, negative on my end."_

 _"9 here, my scopes are clear."_

 _"5 here, got them! Sector five niner four! Red Wing is engaging!"_

 _"Okay, I see them! In that case, Flanker Squadron should be vectoring in any second now!"_

 _"Yeah, yeah! They're engaging too! Missiles away, standby for BDA!"_

Zelda impatiently drummed his hands against his dash. He wondered what his squadron was fighting against. It sounded pretty big to need two wings of Wombats, as well as at least two squadrons of Broadswords.

 _"Leader, I'm getting a signal... that's it, shields are down, I say again, the shield is down!"_

 _"Understood! Omega Leader to Bayonet Leader, the target's shields are down, I say again, shields are down! Request permission to begin our run, over?"_

" _Omega Flight, you are cleared hot! I say again, you are cleared hot!"_

" _Copy! Alright, all Omega Flight pilots, roll in on target 3-Alpha!"_

Ah. Zelda nodded his head in understanding as he boosted the volume on his radio. His squadron was attacking a Covenant destroyer. Geared more for anti-ship warfare, destroyers weren't necessarily the best equipped to fight off small fighters, so as far as warships went, destroyers were one of the easier targets for Broadswords. That being said, it wasn't as if they were defenseless...

 _"Target 3-Alpha should be deploying pulse laser turrets any second now,"_ Bellum was saying. _"Lock on to any incoming radar emissions. That should be those turrets!"_

 _"I see the turrets! They're in the open!"_

 _"Hit those towers before they can fire! All pilots, engage! Fox three, fox three!"_

 _"Missiles are away!"_

 _"Omega to Bayonet, missiles are away, thirty seconds to impact! Standby!"_

Zelda waited with bated breath to hear if the missiles hit. He didn't have to wait long.

 _"Good hits! Bayonet, I've got eyes on five plus hits on the enemy pulse laser turrets. Turrets are down, I say again, target 3-Alpha's point defenses are down!"_

 _"Solid copy Omega. Bayonet Leader to Delta Leader, divert to heading one one three, you're cleared hot to engage target 3-Alpha."_

 _"Roger that. This is Delta Squadron, we're in the pipe! Delta to Omega, how are things looking down there, you see any Bandits?"_

" _Negative, your route is… clear… wait a minute, what the hell is– OH SHIT, DELTA, ABORT,_ _ **ABORT**_ _!"_

Zelda sat up alarm as everyone started panicking all at the same time, filling the radio with chatter.

 _"CONTACT, CONTACT!"_

 _"PULL UP, PULL UP! ALL PILOTS, PULL UP!"_

 _"Delta Squadron, abort your run, BREAK CONTACT! Omega Flight, divert to heading... shit, move to cover Delta, COVER THEM!"_

 _"No good! Those ships emerged right between us and them, we are cut off, I say again, WE'RE CUT OFF!"_

" _Bellum, watch out, fighters, coming in!"_

 _"Tornado Leader, can you get to Delta!?"_

" _Negative Bayonet, there's too many of them!"_

 _"Delta Leader to any UNSC call sign, I need help! Delta 3, 7, 9, and 11 are all down! They're all over me! AHHHH!"_

 _"Delta Leader, do you copy? DELTA LEADER, DO YOU COPY!?"_

 _"Negative contact with Delta, Delta is down, I say again, Delta Squadron IS. DOWN!"_

 _"What the hell is going on...!?"_

That's what Zelda wanted to know. But stuck inside a hanger with only a radio for visual, he was having a hard time understanding what just happened. He grabbed his radio.

"Omega-6 to Omega-5. Odessa? Do you copy?" he anxiously asked.

 _"Now's not the time Zelda!"_ came Odessa's immediate and stress filled reply. _"Omega-9, watch it, you got five...nine... shit, multiple Bandits on your six!"_

 _"You see that!? They're headed straight for the_ Canberra _! Omegas 3 and 12, move to intercept! Draw their fire away from the Navy!"_

 _"Jesus Christ, the_ Canberra's _getting pounded! Omega Flight, can you move to cover?"_

 _"Against a ship that size? Are you crazy?"_

" _If we lose the_ Canberra, _the entire line crumbles!_ _ **Someone**_ _, move to cover her, now!"_

" _Too late! Rear Admiral Harper(3) is reporting massive damage all across the_ Canberra's _hull. She's falling back! All available units, move to envelope and provide cover!"_

 _"All fighters, break contact and fall back!"_

Zelda suddenly felt the Trenchard shake as her thrusters were ignited. Over the internal PA system, he heard, _"Attention all personnel, we moving to provide cover! All SF Squads(4), move to alert status red con zero! Crew and ops, secure all floors and standby to be engaged!"_

"God dammit!" Zelda snapped, frustrated at the lack of information. "Control Tower, Omega-6, what the hell is going on out there!?"

 _"Three_ CCS _-class battlecruisers just jumped into this sector!"_ the ATC frantically reported and Zelda felt his heart freeze with fear. _"They just punched a hole right through our defensive line! We're moving to try and provide cover! Omega-6, you got to get out of here!"_

Zelda glanced at his HUD. He was about seventy percent loaded, but the ground crew had yet to even begin refueling him. "I still need fuel! Ground crew, give me fuel god dammit, NOW!"

He wasn't sure if anyone heard him at first, but then he notice one of the maintainers launch herself towards a lever on the wall and pull it. Immediately his fuel reserves began to climb.

"Comeoncomeoncomeon," Zelda urged, mentally willing his tanks to fill faster, but the numbers seemed to be moving so slowly. "HURRY UP!"

Then he heard the one announcement he'd been dreading go over the PA: _"All personnel, we have Bandits! Inbound boarding craft detected, ETA, THIRTY SECONDS!"_

"SHIT!"

Zelda's bird was only twenty percent fueled up, but it was going to have to do. He was in an extremely vulnerable state just sitting there and he refused to be killed while he was still on the ground, sitting there like a crippled bird just waiting to be put out of his misery. "Unhook me! Ground crew, unhook me!" he demanded, gesturing at the fuel line still sticking out of his Broadsword but no one was paying any attention. "Someone unhook me!"

 _BOOM_.

The _Trenchard_ shook as something struck it, and all sorts of alarms began blaring.

 _"Contact! Covenant incursions detected on floors one, four, and ten! All Security Forces, respond!"_

"SHIT!" Zelda yelled. There was no way the Trenchard would be able to hold for long. Part of the problem with the shift to a self-automated ship was the general lack of security personnel able to respond to a boarding incident such as this one. "I NEED SOMEBODY UNHOOK ME RIGHT NOW!"

He reached for his crash harness, fully prepared to leave his fighter and unhook it himself, when the interior door to the hanger abruptly blew open!

 _"BOARDING PARTIES DETECTED IN HANGERS ONE, TWO, AND SIX!"_

An entire platoon of Covenant soldiers came charging into the hanger. Wearing jetpacks, they were all completely undeterred by the lack of air and gravity, and instead instantly began moving to cover. There had been two Security Forces officers stations by the door and they immediately opened up, blowing away the first couple of Grunts that had entered the room, but then a couple of Elites entered and quickly returned fire. The SF officers were unable to disable the Elite's personal shields in time before they were gunned down, their bodies left floating where they had died.

With the most immediate threat dealt with, the Covenant quickly turned their guns on all the other personnel nearby. Air Force aircraft maintainers were never expected to see direct combat against Covenant infantry and as such, they had neither the training nor the weapons to deal with this threat. Airmen were quickly blown away as they scrambled to find cover, only in an open hanger like this, there was little to none to be found.

"Ah, fuck!" Zelda yelled, horrified, as he watched the slaughter.

Movement caught his attention and he turned to see one fuel specialist launch herself towards the bodies of the SF officers, trying to reach their assault rifles floating harmlessly by them, only to get snagged out of the air by the Elite and thrown hard against the deck. Pining her to the ground with his foot, he leveled his plasma rifle. "NOOO!"

Releasing his magnetic clamps, Zelda fired his maneuvering thrusters, turning his Broadsword around. The noise immediately attracted the attention of all the Covenant present, and they all looked up in time to see Zelda's gun port to his main cannon open up. "Die you ugly mother - !"

The Elite essentially exploded as Zelda's initial round hit him square in the chest. Holes big enough for Zelda to have climbed through were punched into the back wall as Zelda sprayed down the rest of the Covenant boarding party. If the situation wasn't so dire, he might have even laughed at the sight of their bodies bursting open like a ripe watermelon sitting out in the open in the middle of a hot summer day. As it was though, he was more concerned about the possibility he may have accidentally hit the very airman he was trying to save, so he looked around, trying to see past all the floating globules of blood and body parts, trying to find her.

He let out a sigh of relief as the airman abruptly sat up, seemingly unharmed though it was hard to tell since she was completely covered from head to toe in purple gore. She grabbed one of the assault rifles, which had somehow survived intact, before glancing in his direction and began gesturing widely for him to leave.

"I can't! Unhook me!" Zelda yelled back, jabbing at the fuel lines that were keeping him tethered.

The airman nodded in understanding but before she could do anything, there was another explosion, and the door on the other end of the hanger was blown in.

"Son of a bitch!" Zelda snapped as more Covenant soldiers came pouring in, guns blazing.

He turned his fighter in their direction and fired a burst. The first Covenant soldier to come through the door, a Skirmisher Major, had his head and upper torso blown completely off, but unfortunately, unlike the other door, there was a Wombat vehicle down for maintenance parked there, giving the Covenant immediate cover. Zelda could have easily shot through the Wombat, but one of the things the ground crew had _not_ gotten around to doing was completely refilling the ammo drum for his main cannon and as such, Zelda was already down to fifty rounds. Rather than waste his remaining ammo on blind shots, Zelda instead loaded up a Medusa missile and fired.

The missile streaked across the room and slammed into the Wombat. The Medusa failed to explode as Zelda had deliberately failed to arm it, because an explosion in the hanger would probably be lethal to himself, but the impact alone was enough to move the Wombat. Zelda could actually see a couple Covenant get crushed as the Wombat was shoved hard against the wall and out of the way, exposing the rest of them. Zelda immediately fired.

"Am I disconnected yet?" Zelda demanded to know as the last soldier disintegrated, and he glanced over his shoulder only to see the airman he'd been talking to had taken a plasma bolt to the face, killing her instantly. "Fuck! Fuck this!"

Zelda experimentally lifted off and started heading for the door with his maneuvering thrusters, only to abruptly get stopped short by the fuel lines(5). He craned his neck, wondering if there was some way he could just break it free, but it was pretty solidly built, and probably only his main thrusters had that kind of torque. But if he fired off his main thrusters in here, the exhaust from his engine would possibly incinerate everyone not inside a shield or behind some blast doors alive. And there were still a lot of ground crew floating around.

"SOMEBODY, either unhook me or get the fuck out of the hanger!" Zelda roared in frustration.

 _whomp whomp whomp_

A series of plasma bolts smacked against his canopy and Zelda turned to see more Covenant soldiers emerging from the first entrance firing their plasma pistols at his Broadsword. Their weapons were too weak to do much damage against him, but there was always a chance they would hit something critical. Plus, if they had some explosives like grenades, that could prove to be problematic.

Almost as soon as he thought that, Zelda noticed one of the Elites stand up and jet packed straight towards his fighter's engines. As he flew through the air, the Elite pulled out a plasma grenade.

"OH NO YOU DON'T!" Zelda yelled, grabbing his control yoke and yanking it to the side.

He had managed to time it perfectly. His Broadsword spun on its latitudinal axis and the edge of his wing hit the Elite right in the chest. In the zero gravity room, the Elite was sent flying back into his comrades, knocking them over like bowling pins. A couple of Grunts tried to help him up, but the Elite angrily shoved them away and pushed himself off the ground. Even from his cockpit, Zelda could see the Elite angrily glare at him, and he lifted his hand in a threatening gesture -

\- only to realize at some point during his landing, he had accidentally activated his plasma grenade.

Zelda could only imagine the look of horror that passed over the Elite's face as the Elite lifted his hand to chuck the grenade away, but it abruptly exploded before he could, sending body parts and armor fragments scattering in all directions. Zelda couldn't help but laugh.

 _"Security! Covenant forces inside the control tower!"_

Zelda's head snapped up and he looked over his shoulder in the direction of the control tower. Overlooking the hanger were a series of blast windows that the ATCs could look through and visually monitor all aircraft traffic, if need be. Normally Zelda could look up and see the ATCs sitting at their stations but at the moment, all he saw were Covenant soldiers rushing into the room and gunning down the airmen before they could even get out of their seats.

The Covenant squads must have been talking to each other because a couple Covenant Jackals ran up to one of the windows and began setting up what looked like an explosive breaching charge. At the same time, Zelda could see a trio of Grunts bringing a plasma cannon and tripod into room, which they hurriedly began setting up behind the window. At the same time, an Elite emerged from the far door carrying a fuel rod cannon.

"Oh, that's not good!" Zelda yelped. Both the plasma cannon and the fuel rod cannon would be able to do some serious damage to his fighter, and he needed to take out both targets before they could fire. But while his main cannon was already pointed at the Elite, Zelda knew there was no way he would be able to turn his fighter around and engage the plasma cannon before it was ready to fire.

In desperation, Zelda did the first thing that came to mind: he jammed down on his forward facing maneuvering thrusters.

 _WHOOOOOOOSHHH!_

A concentrated jet of hot air shot out from the front of his fighter, causing it to fly backwards and go crashing into the wall. However, the exhaust also hit the Elite like a baseball bat to the face, knocking him over just as he fired his fuel rod cannon.

 _PSHHHHHHH!_

The fuel rod cannon rocket shot right over Zelda's Broadsword and slammed into the control tower windows! The entire control tower exploded as the rocket prematurely detonated the breaching charge, as well as set off a sympathetic explosion among all the other explosives the Covenant were carrying, wiping out the entire boarding party.

"Holy shit, I can't believe that actually worked," Zelda gasped in astonishment.

" _All personnel, be advised, Covenant Phantoms detected in emergency landing strips two and three! All crew and ops personnel, evacuate!"_

"What the fuck? The Covenant really want this ship dead if they're sending Phantoms into the ship itself to land infantry!" Zelda gapped.

Of course, all this information did was raise the pressure on Zelda. With Covenant infantry pouring out of every nock and cranny, it was clear this ship didn't have much more time left. He needed to leave, _**right fucking now.**_

He reached for the power lever to his main thrusters, but then hesitated. At the same time, he couldn't just leave all these people to die here. At the moment, he was the only thing preventing the Covenant from coming in and slaughtering them all. There had to be some way for them to get off the ship. But all the escape pods were outside of the hanger and with Covenant infantry trying to break their way through both doors, there was no way for them to escape. He debated whether or not he could try to load them into his Broadsword, but there was barely enough room inside his cockpit for one person and his bomb bay was not pressurized meaning once they were outside of the ship, they would all eventually suffocate, even with their spacesuits on. He tried to think of another way, but there just wasn't. Everyone in the hanger was already dead, they just didn't know it yet. The only question now was, would he be joining them in death?

"Fuck, fuck!"

He could see Covenant soldiers amassing just outside the hanger doors, as well as a ton of fuel rod cannons and plasma launchers, and Zelda realized he was simply, _out of time._ He had to make a decision: did he stay and die with everyone else? Or did he leave, and live to fight another day?

In the end, it wasn't really a choice.

"Sorry guys," Zelda whispered, powering up his main thrusters as the Covenant soldiers came pouring into the room from both entrances. "I can't help any longer."

He ignited his thrusters.

There was an audible _snap_ as the fuel lines finally broke, and Zelda's Broadsword rocketed out of the hanger. A couple of fuel rod shots followed him as some of the Covenant soldiers tried one last time to stop him, but they all missed. As he rapidly departed from the ship, he could see the Covenant gunning down the last of the airmen left inside the hanger and he closed his eyes until he was too far away to see the hanger anymore, and all he could see was the _Trenchard,_ with her hull almost completely covered in purple-colored boarding craft and drop pods.

" _Attention all UNSC call signs_ ," someone abruptly said over Zelda's radio, even as he continued to speed away. _"This is Colonel Boyer, commander of the UNSC_ Trenchard _. Be advised, the_ Trenchard _has been completely overrun. I've got… Covenant infantry knocking on the door to my cockpit right now. They'll be through in a matter of minutes now, and… my crew won't be able to hold them off. I can't let them capture this ship, so in exactly fifteen seconds… we will be self-detonating a Havoc nuke inside our engine room. Hopefully the blast will… take out quite a few Covenant aircraft. To any UNSC forces still out there, all craft, stand clear of_ Trenchard _airspace_. _I say again: all craft, stand clear of – "_

There was a brilliant white flash behind him and Zelda looked over his shoulder in time to see a massive fireball consuming the _Trenchard_ , throwing chunks of the ship in all directions. A strange noise began sounding over the radio, and it took him a few moments to realize what it was: the garbled sound of people screaming.

"Fuck…" Zelda whispered, completely horrified by the sound, yet, he couldn't bear to turn the radio off. It didn't matter though: the screaming only lasted for a few more seconds before the radio waves completely cut off. "Fuck! FUCK! **FUCK FUCK FUCK!"**

Zelda slammed his fist against his control panel as anger and grief overwhelmed him. He could feel blood beginning to drip down his hand on as the metal housing busted his knuckles open, but Zelda ignored the pain.

His radar let out a _ping_ as it detected movement, and Zelda shot a glance at his rear scopes. Behind him, he could see all three Covenant battlecruisers moving towards the planet, with no one left to stop them. They callously drove passed the burning remains of the _Trenchard_ like it wasn't even there, coming to halt in orbit nearly ten thousand kilometers above sea level. Even as Zelda watched, the ships began deploying in some sort of triangle formation with the dorsal side of their hulls pointed straight down at Actium, leaving a massive gap in the center of their formation, big enough for a fleet to pass through. What it was for was revealed moments later.

" _Slipspace rupture, detected."_

A slipspace portal opened up and emerging out from it came a massive Covenant capital ship. Zelda recognized the ship as the same one that had destroyed the UNSC _Pégoud,_ back inside Tenedos' rings.

The _ORS-_ class heavy cruiser continued forward, coming to a halt in the dead space between the three battlecruisers. As it did, Zelda noticed all sorts of hanger bay doors opening as hundreds, if not thousands, of drop pods, troop carriers, and dropships pouring out from the bowels of the ship. They all headed for the surface of Actium and Zelda didn't need a map to know where they were going: Byzas, and the Thracia Province.

"God, I hope the ground forces are ready," Zelda whispered as he headed to where the remains of the UNSC forces were assembling.

"Because there is nothing stopping the Covenant now."

* * *

1\. I mentioned attack transports in my other story (though I called it a troop transport.) For those who don't remember or didn't read my other story, an attack transport is similar to a troopship or a troop transport (which, as the name implies, is a ship that carries troops,) only instead of JUST carrying troops, it also carries its own fleet of landing craft (in this case, a flight of Pelicans.) In the US military, troopships and attack transports were all under the control of the US Navy (with attack transports no longer being used, having fallen out of favor soon after the Korean War) but in my slice of the Halo Universe, I've assigned them to the Air Force as one of the duties of the Air Force (in my mind) is heavy transport.

The ship that brought Moss and his squad from Newsaka to Actium was one such attack transport.

2\. For some reason, I vaguely remembering having a discussion with one of my reviewers **(finally figured out who this was: it was Broman777 and topic appeared in my "reviewer response" at the end of** _ **MIA**_ **chapter 7)** about the possibility of performance enhancement drugs being issued out by the UNSC to their soldiers. I say "vaguely remembering" because I can't find said conversation so either I simply can't find it (probably the most likely explanation,) the conversation only took place inside my head (also a strong possibility,) or the conversation was deleted for whatever reason. At any case, it was something I thought would be interesting to bring up, but given the topic of this chapter, it's not something I wanted to delve too deeply into right now. That's also the reason why what Zelda is drinking is not as "heavy" as some other substances.

3\. Rear Admiral Harper is intended to be Fleet Admiral Joseph Harper, a canon character who is first introduced in _Halo 2_ , though you only hear his voice and don't actually see him. He's the guy, when the Covenant first arrive at Earth, who wants to attack the Covenant right away but Admiral Hood holds him back. The UNSC _Canberra_ was his flagship during that battle and since I already have the _Canberra_ in my story, I figured, might as well bring her captain along as well.

4\. UNSCAF Security Forces (aka, military police,) not Special Forces. I think most of my readers will be able to pick up on that, but just to prevent any confusion…

5\. As far as I know, fuel lines (at least for civilian gas stations) are actually pretty easy to break away. But in this case, I decided against it for the sake of a more dramatic story.

6\. Obviously there is no way for me to know for certain, but I personally feel the Air Force would take great pains to avoid using nautical terminology on their ships so people wouldn't confuse them as being part of the Navy. So instead of "levels" and "decks," they use the term "floors." Instead of "port" and "starboard," it's "left" and "right." Instead of "bridge," it's "cockpit" and instead of "CIC" its "AIC" or "action information center." It's also why I've done my best to have my Air Force personnel _**not**_ referred to their ships as "she" as that seems to me more of a naval traditional, though I do believe I've been very inconsistent about that…

General Notes

7\. For Zelda's escape from the hanger, I may have been… _slightly_ influenced by Poe and Finn's escape from the First Order tie fighter hanger in _Star Wars: The Force Awakens._

Just slightly…

8\. The part where the _Trenchard_ gets destroyed is partially inspired by the destruction of the Battlestar _Columbia_ from the movie, _Battlestar Galatica: Razor_ , specifically the screaming over the airwaves moments after the ship gets destroyed. If you haven't seen that scene, I highly recommend it. It's actually a bit disturbing.

If you're in the United States at least, you should be able to search on youtube either by the title "BSG Battlestar Columbia and Young Admiral Adama" or search for channel name Sam Guerra for the clip (should be the channel with only two videos.) Go to the 1:37 minute mark for the scene in question.

9\. Like the current US military does, I feel there would be different designations for the bombs they use depending on their size. In this chapter, we see the _Mark 211 General Purpose Bomb_ , which would be the largest of all the bombs in the UNSC arsenal, weighing in at 1000 kilograms worth of explosives. Other bombs would include:

Mark 208: 120 kilograms

Mark 209: 250 kilograms

Mark 210: 500 kilograms

The Mark 208 bomb is actually a canon bomb, first showing up in _Halo Wars_ , though its nominal weight and size is never given. This bomb shows up at least once in my other story, _Missing in Action,_ during chapter 2, where it was the weapon used to destroy the AA Wrath that had been assaulting Hoplite-3's position at the hotel.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

 **Highway 495, Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
0953**

 **Marcus**

An obnoxious ringing noise filled his ears. Marcus didn't know what it was, nor could he figure out where it was coming from. He felt so sluggish at the moment, like his brain wasn't firing on all cylinders. He didn't know what was going on; the feeling was almost like, he was in a state of absolute exhaustion, similar to how it felt after he had just pulled an all-nighter. He was awake, but not all the lights had been turned on just yet.

"mmm, grrmop."

Something began mixing in with the ringing. It sounded like someone was shouting only, it was like they were shouting on a really windy day and so while he could tell someone was saying _something_ , he just couldn't make out the words.

 _ratatatata_.

Now there was some other noise getting added to the mix. Well, not noise exactly. It was more of a feeling on his skin. It kind of felt like he was standing next to a really loud bass speaker: he could hear the bass, but the feeling of the noise on his skin drowned out all of his other senses.

He felt something warm touch his neck, contrasting all the cold air he felt elsewhere on his body, and he let out a small moan of contentment. The warmth was followed by more muffled yelling, but he ignored it, lost in the comfort the warmth provided. Abruptly, he felt it disappear from his neck and he groaned, tilting his head in its direction, searching for its heat.

"MARCUS, GET UP!"

Marcus coughed, then slowly picked his head up. At once the ringing in his ears disappeared and everything hit him at the same time.

Dresden was leaning towards him, screaming in his ear. Behind him, he could see Orlović's legs sticking out from the cabin roof. Orlović spun around in place, and then Marcus heard the sound of a machine gun going off, feeling the reverb of the muzzle blast against his body. Overhead, he could hear some inhuman shrieking which left chills going down his spine.

"Is he dead!?" Orlović was screaming. "Did we fucking lose our driver already!?"

"No, he's up!" Dresden yelled back. To Marcus, he said, "Marcus, you alright? Need you to shake it off buddy!"

"Sarge?" he weakly groaned, taking a look around.

He was sitting behind the wheel of a HEMTT. The HEMTT was currently sitting, with its engine running, on some sort of five lane highway. About five meters in front of them in the middle of their lane was a nasty looking pothole, but the HEMTT wasn't pointed directly forward at their lane. In fact, it was pointed slightly to the left, looking directly at the side of a tractor trailer. Actually, it almost looked as if the HEMTT had crashed into the tractor trailer. Or rather, _Marcus_ had crashed into the tractor trailer.

"What happened?" Marcus asked. There was another screeching noise overhead, causing him to flinch. "And what's making all that noise?"

"Covenant Banshees. Look Marcus, I get that you're still a bit dazed, but we really need to get moving again," Dresden replied with poorly concealed impatience. "I'll explain later; drive!"

Marcus nodded. He grabbed the clutch and shifted the HEMTT into gear.

"Orlović, we clear in the back!?" Dresden yelled up.

"YEAH MAN! BACK IT UP!"

 _BEEP BEEP BEEP!_

The HEMTT's backup alarm sounded as Marcus carefully backed the vehicle up until he was clear of the tractor trailer. Then he drove forward, carefully easing the vehicle through the small gap left between the front of the tractor trailer and edge of the pothole, which he was beginning to realize wasn't a pothole but in fact a blast crater. More screeching overhead caused him to duck, but he continued to barrel forward down the road.

 _"Voodoo 6-1, Voodoo-6, give me an update on your status, over!"_

"Voodoo 6, 6-1, we're on the move again!" Dresden yelled back into the radio.

 _"Copy that, we're Oscar Mike!"_

Further down the road, Marcus could see a 6x6 Warthog(1) variant pull back onto the highway and take off.

"Hey, follow the Lieutenant's vehicle!" Dresden barked and Marcus nodded, shifting the vehicle into gear. Outside, he could see a number of Banshees in the air, but they all seemed to be departing from the area.

" _Voodoo-6 to all 6 vehicles, looks like the Banshees are sodding off for now! All vehicles, continue pushing towards our objective, over!"_

He jumped slightly when Orlović abruptly slid off his harness and landed inside the cab.

"Fucking cocksuckers!" he viciously spat out.

"Orlović! You good?"

"Yea, I'm good," Orlović replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. "The real question is: is he good?" He pointed at Marcus. "He's not going to faint on us again, is he?"

"Yeah, he's fine," Dresden snapped before Marcus could reply. "Marcus, ignore him and just keep driving."

"Yes sir," Marcus murmured.

Glancing out the window, further in the distance and at a much higher altitude than what the Banshees were flying at, he could see a number of purple-colored, teardrop shaped aircraft passing by overhead, being chased by all sorts of tracers rounds, but none of the shells seemed to have been fired from anywhere nearby. Most of Marcus' attention though was on the sheer number of civilian vehicles in the breakdown lanes and on the sides of the highway, all of which had been seemingly abandoned.

"Where is everyone?"

"Hiding in the woods for safety," Dresden tersely replied. "We're under attack- well, I say 'we' but it's not us specifically, just the general area. Banshees and Seraphs were passing through the area on their way towards the city when some nearby AA battery just opened up, only apparently they didn't know how to use their range finder. Totally missed their target and like they say, 'what goes up, must come down;' their shells started hitting the highway. Stupid Colonial Militia morons and their stupid training and their general lack of discipline!"

"Dude, _we're_ Colonial Militia," Orlović pointed out.

Dresden blinked as if he was suddenly realizing that fact for the first time. "Oh. Right."

More howling overhead caused Marcus to flinch once more, but not as badly as the first time. He must have been getting used to the noise. "Shouldn't we be shooting at them?" he couldn't help but ask, even though that was probably the last thing he wanted to do.

"They're out of range. At this distance, if we wanted to engage, we'd need at least a 12.7mil heavy machine gun to reach them. Maybe even a 14.5mil. No, our priority is to focus on getting to our objective so Marcus, if you can speed it up some, that'll be swell."

Marcus nodded and pushed down on the accelerator. In the distance ahead of him, he could just barely make out the skyscrapers that made up the skyline of the city of Byzas on the horizon. All sorts of explosions were going off overhead in the sky as the Covenant focused their attack on the city itself.

"So... what _did_ happen?" Marcus finally asked.

"Some missile, an Argent, I think, hit the road right in front of us," Dresden informed him. "You swerved to avoid it but I guess you didn't see the tractor trailer abandoned there because you crashed right into it. Hit your head on the steering wheel, knocked yourself silly."

"And that's why we wear helmets," Orlović said in a singsongy voice. Dresden ignored him.

"You weren't out for long, but as soon as we can, I'd like you to get checked out by a medic and scanned for concussions. For now, just let me know if you feel funny."

"Yes Sergeant," Marcus said, nodded his head again. All of that sounded familiar. He remembered freaking out when the first shell had hit, thinking they were under attack, but after that, it was just a panic blur. Knowing it was just a mistake somehow made him feel a bit better, but only just. Though he did just have one more question.

"Why aren't the Covenant attacking us now?"

"We're a target of opportunity," Dresden explained. "We're a relatively defenseless supply convoy so we're not a priority objective for the Covenant; the defensive hardpoints in the city are. But once they hit those, the Covies will come back around and start to shoot at us in earnest, which is why we _really_ need to get off the highway, if not the road, before that point."

Marcus inclined his head in acknowledgement, but he was slightly distracted by the sight of Orlović messing around with something in the seat beside him. It took him a few moments to realize Orlović was removing a bunch of ammo belts from their cans and linking them together.

"Orlović, what's your tracer loadout," Dresden demanded to know.

"Just the standard: every fifth round," Orlović distractedly replied as he continued to shove rounds into the belt.

"Make it every tenth round," Dresden ordered. "You in particular, I've noticed, when firing at a target at that range, have a tendency to try and use your tracers to lead your target. I keep telling you: it's an optical illusion, you're not actually hitting the aircraft with your tracers; the tracers are passing behind it. Maybe this way will convince you to use your sights more."

Orlović twitched and glared at Dresden. "I just got finished with all of this," he protested, raising the three belts he had already linked together to show him.

"Well, now I'm telling you to do it again," Dresden snapped. "You should have checked with me before you started working."

"Man, try to show some initiative around here," Orlović grumbled, but nevertheless began to do as he was told.

"And hurry it up; I got a feeling the Covenant are going to be coming back around in a few minutes, and I want you back on that gun and ready to fight back before they do," Dresden commanded.

 _"6 Actual to all Voodoo 6 vehicles. Uh, keep sharp guys, we should be coming up on our exit soon, over."_

"Roger that, 6-1 acknowledges," Dresden said into the radio. "You got that Marcus? Keep an eye on the Lieutenant's Warthog, he should be turning any moment now."

"Got it Sarge," Marcus replied.

Ahead of him, he could see the Warthog drifting to the far right hand lane, slowing down as they approached the next exit. Marcus moved to follow them, when a slight whistling noise filled the air, and then a green streak dropped straight out of the sky and slammed into the Warthog.

 _ **KABOOOM!**_

"OH MY GOD!" Marcus squealed as the Warthog exploded.

"Son of a BITCH! CONTACT! Did anyone see where that shot came from!?" Dresden yelled.

 _"Covenant Banshees, left side, LEFT SIDE!"_

"Covenant Banshees, left side, up high!" Dresden repeated out loud. "Orlović, get on your gun and fire it up! Go go go!"

"I'm on it!" Orlović yelled back as he scrambled back into his harness, dragging the belts of ammo with him.

"6-1 Actual to all Voodoo 6 victors, be advised, Voodoo-6 is down, I say again, Voodoo-6 is down!" Dresden screamed into the radio as the shrieking of incoming Banshees filled the air once more.

 _RATATATATATATATA!_

"SARGE! HEY! I GOT BANSHEES UP HIGH AND DOWN LOW! I'M GOING AFTER THE ONES DOWN LOW!"

"BILLY! Make sure there are no friendlies down in the beaten zone before you do! 6-2, 6-1! We got Banshees on our left, up high and down low! We're going for the low ones, you go for the high ones!"

 _"Roger that! Hey 6-1, make sure you check where your rounds are landing, we got friendlies all over the damn place!"_

"Yeah yeah, we're on it!"

Brass casings and metal links began showering Marcus' windshield and tracers filled the skies as Orlović started firing.

 _RATATATATATATATATATATATATA!_

Dresden abruptly punched the ceiling. "Orlović, short steady burst!"

"SHUT UP THEO, I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!"

 _RATATATATATA! RATATATATA!_

 _"Voodoo Actual to 6-1, give me a sitrep, over!"_

"Voodoo, this is 6-1," Dresden said into his radio. "We have been engaged! Voodoo-6 is down, I say again, Voodoo-6 Actual is down! No sign of any survivors, we are proceeding onward to the mission objective area, over!"

 _"Copy that 6-1, let me know when you've arrive, over!"_

"Wilco! 6-1, out!"

The convoy barreled down the road, all guns blazing. Marcus flinched as two Banshees roared past, strafing the road with their plasma cannons, but all they hit were a couple of abandoned cars on the side of the road, both of which promptly burst into flames.

 _ **PSHHHHHHHHH! BOOM!**_

"Ahhhh!" Marcus let out a clamor of alarm as a nearby pickup truck was hit by a fuel rod cannon, which exploded, scattering burning car parts all over the highway. A flaming tire in particular was launched at high speeds, hitting the side mirror of his HEMTT and causing it to break off.

"Keep driving Marcus, keep driving! Orlović, keep those Banshees off us!"

"WHAT DO YOU THINK I'M TRYING TO DO!?"

 _RATATATATATATATATATA!_

Marcus quickly moved to the right lane and started to drive up the exit ramp, but as they reached the Lieutenant's Warthog which was still burning merrily away, he started to slow down.

"No no, don't slow down! What are you doing?" Dresden yelped.

"Aren't we supposed to check for survivors?" Marcus asked even though admittedly, that was the last thing he wanted to do.

"A, the chances of anyone surviving that are next to none and b, we are sitting ducks out here! We can't -"

One of the doors to the Warthog suddenly burst opened, and a flaming figure came stumbling out. He fell to the ground but then clearly started to try and pick himself up.

"Holy crap!" Dresden yelled, clearly startled. "Never mind, forget what I said! Stop the vehicle Marcus! 6-1 to all Voodoo 6 victors, 6-1 is stopping to rescue survivors from the CO's vehicle! All Voodoo 6 victors, push past 6-1! Push past, push past! Do not stop! Push past 6-1!"

Marcus brought the HEMTT to a stop a couple meters behind the burning Warthog.

"Get the fire extinguisher!" Dresden bellowed as he grabbed something from the door and hopped out of the vehicle.

As Marcus struggled to remove the fire extinguisher from its mount, he could see Dresden running up to the burning man and throwing a fire blanket over him.

Marcus was finally able to free the extinguisher from its mount and was just about to hop out of the cab when he was almost run over by another HEMTT. He had forgotten his side mirror was broken. He waited as the rest of the platoon quickly streamed passed him, with the Banshees following closely behind. They apparently weren't interested in a lone HEMTT sitting all by itself as they completely ignored Marcus and the Rig, giving them a slight reprieve.

"ORLOVIĆ, BRING ME THE MEDKIT! MARCUS, HELP ME!" Dresden demanded and Marcus hastily hopped out of the cab as Orlović abandoned his spot at the gun.

Marcus ran up to the pair with the fire extinguisher, only to find it was no longer needed as Dresden had managed to smother the flames with the blanket. Unfortunately for Marcus, all the lack of flames did was expose just how bad the damage was.

The man's back was completely charred to the point where it was impossible for Marcus to tell what was flesh, what was clothing, and what was armor. The man must not have been wearing his helmet, as his hair had caught fire, leaving third degree burns across his scalp, leaving his skin stiff and leathery looking. While Dresden had been able to smother the fire before it could affect the man's face too badly, the sheer heat alone was enough to cause second degree burns, causing the man's face to break out into blisters. Presumably the man also had burns across his arms and the back of his legs, however Marcus couldn't tell as the man's uniformed seemed to have melted into his skin.

And then there was the smell.

Dresden gently removed the blanket from the man's shoulders as he slowly lowered him onto his back so he could begin medical treatment. The man was too far gone to notice the pain, but the removal of the fire blanket caused the acrid scent of burnt flesh to fill the air. Marcus' nostrils flared as the smell of something so nauseating yet sweet, so putrid yet so meaty, burned the inside of his nose. He felt his stomach turn over, and his mouth began to fill with saliva as the urge to vomit started to overwhelm him.

Bending over slightly at the waist, Marcus hastily turned away from the sight of the injured man, slapping a hand over his mouth as he did so. He was busy doing his best not to puke when Orlović ran up with a medic kit.

"Oh shit, is that Arty McArthur?" Orlović gasped as he somehow recognized the poor man lying on the ground despite his injuries.

"Yeah," Dresden bluntly replied as he removed the man's front armor plate. "Orlović, give me the biofoam. Marcus. Marcus!"

Marcus jumped. "Sir?" he weakly asked, doing his best not to glance at the injured man.

"Go get the stretcher! It's in the tool box on the driver's side of the Rig!"

"Yes Sergeant!"

Grateful for the distraction, Marcus quickly ran back to the rig and located the tool box in question. He found the stretcher, folded up in a bundle. He struggled to open it, fumbling with the straps because his hands kept shaking, but eventually he was able to get it. He quickly dashed back, only to see Dresden holding a rather wicked, medieval-looking, torture-like device in his hand. The device was about fifteen to sixteen centimeters long and had a red cylindrical handle that was about four centimeters in diameter. Most notably, it had ten wicked-looking needles arranged in a circle sticking out from one end and by the looks of it, Dresden was about ready to stick the device into Arty's chest.

"Ah... what... what the heck is that?" Marcus nervously asked.

"It's an introducer for a sternal intraosseous infusion system," Dresden answered as he hastily cleaned a spot just below Arty's sternal notch with an alcohol swap.

"Really? Arty has only ever calls it a Fast1," Orlović commented, anxiously waiting with a couple of IV bags in hand.

"That's the name for the overall _kit_. This is just one specific piece."

"And... what's it for?" Marcus couldn't help but ask.

"I need to get an IV into him, but his arms and legs are burnt to hell and I can't find a vein," Dresden distractedly reported as he took out what looked like an almost triangle shaped bandage and slapped it against Arty's chest. "Only way now."

"Um… shouldn't we wait for the medic first?" Marcus suggested as he eyeballed the needles.

"Arty _**is**_ the medic."

"Oh... oh JESUS!" Marcus squeal as Dresden abruptly jabbed the introducer into Arty's chest. He flinched and turned away as Dresden promptly pulled it out, expecting to see all sorts of blood gushing out, but there wasn't anything like that. Instead, all there was, was some sort of clear plastic tube sticking out from the impact area.

"IV!" Dresden snapped, tossing the introducer aside and attaching an even longer tube to the one already in Arty's chest. Orlović held out one of the IV bags as Dresden attached the other end of the tube to it. "Hold that! Alright, let's get him on the stretcher! Marcus, grab his legs!"

Marcus took that as his cue to toss the stretcher on the ground. Reluctantly, he took up position by Arty's legs.

"Ready? On three! One… two… three… lift!"

Marcus grabbed Arty by the ankles, but as he started to lift, his hands slipped, peeling a layer of… something away from Arty's legs, exposing bloody looking flesh underneath it. Arty let out a scream of pain and Marcus stared horrified at his hands as he realized that "something" had been Arty's _skin._ The urge to puke became overwhelming.

"Marcus! MARCUS! God dammit. Orlović, switch with him!" Dresden snapped as Marcus finally lost his battle, leaned to the side, and hurled.

Orlović rudely shoved Marcus aside and Marcus was vaguely aware as the two of them lifted Arty up and gently placed him on the stretcher.

"Theo, Arty's got to get to a hospital otherwise he's going to die! But we ain't got no room in the Rig for him!" Orlović warned.

"I know! We're either going to have to strap him to the roof next to the turret, or wait for someone to happen to come by!"

As if on cue, the loud rumbling of an approaching heavy vehicle filled the air, and Marcus looked up to see another 6x6 Warthog vehicle come roaring up the ramp.

"Hey! Stop that vehicle!" Dresden bellowed. Unsling his rifle from around his shoulders, he recklessly ran out in front of the vehicle with his rifle pointed straight at the driver's seat. With his free hand, he gestured for the driver to stop. "HEY! STOP THE VEHICLE!"

The Warthog thankfully rolled to a stop, and the driver side window was lowered. A woman wearing a military uniform and the insignia of the Actium Army stuck poked her head out.

"What the fuck Theo!?" the woman demanded. "I would have stopped for you! Why the fuck are you pointing a fucking weapon at me!?"

"Where's the rest of your platoon Standish?" Dresden demanded as he ran up to the vehicle. "No, actually, forget that! Do you have any room in the back of your 'Hog to take a stretcher? What are you carrying?"

"Cans of 20mil. Why, what the hell is going on?" Standish reported as she climbed out of the Warthog and froze at the sight of Arty laying helplessly on the ground. "Holy shit! Is that Arty McArthur? What the fuck happened to him?"

"Banshees! Look, he's going to die unless we get him to the hospital! We don't have any room on our rig, can we put him in yours?"

"Yeah yeah! But I got to get these cans out!"

"They for the evac zone?"

"Yeah!"

"Throw them on our rig, we'll take them if you can get Arty to the hospital!"

"Sounds good to me!" Standish yelled, running to the back of her Warthog and throwing open the hatch.

"Orlović, come on! Marcus! You still with us!"

Marcus wiped his mouth away and jumped to his feet. "Yes sir!"

"Come on then!"

Marcus dashed over to the Warthog. Grabbing a massive can with each hand, he ran back to the Rig and lifted it up to Orlović, who began strapping them to the roof the vehicle.

"Alright, load up Arty and let's go!" Dresden barked. He glanced at Marcus. "Are you going to be able to help this time?"

Marcus nodded and to demonstrate, he grabbed the stretcher by the handles.

"Okay, on three! One, two, three, lift!"

With Standish's help, they loaded Arty and the stretcher onto her Hog. Hooking the IV bags to the crossbars over the top of the cargo bay, Dresden hopped out before Standish slammed the hatch shut.

"Drive as fast as you can, do **not** stop for anything," Dresden ordered. "I'll talk to your CO, let her know what's going on, copy?"

"Yeah, okay! Hey, good luck!"

"Yeah, you too!"

Standish quickly reversed down the ramp, cut a u-ie, and took off in the direction they had come from. In the meantime, Dresden had grabbed Marcus by the vest and shoved him in the direction of the Rig.

"Mount up! Let's go!" Dresden barked, raising his index finger over his hand and spun it in a large, horizontal circle.

Jamming the vehicle into gear, Marcus slammed down on the accelerator, causing the large vehicle to jerk forward. They slammed into Arty's now burnt out Warthog, shoving it out of the way, and barreled down the road.

"Sarge? I don't know where I'm going," Marcus admitted. Dresden lifted his hand and pointed forward.

"See all those explosions in the sky a couple klicks down the road? That's where the airport is, that's where we're headed. Go in that direction," Dresden snapped, and Marcus nodded.

As he drove, Marcus couldn't help but wonder if Dresden was mad at him, as he hadn't looked in Marcus' direction yet. "Sergeant Dresden? I'm sorry about puking back there and not being able to help out."

"Don't worry about that now Private," Dresden commanded. "We'll discuss it later. For now, just focus on driving as fast as you can, copy?"

"Yes sir."

The sound of the explosions steadily grew in pitch and intensity as they drew nearer and nearer to their destination. As they got closer, Marcus begin to make out individual Banshees over the airport itself, making strafing run after strafing run on unseen targets on the ground. They didn't appear to be all that effective though as ground forces were shooting back with everything they had. Furthermore, higher up in the sky, Marcus could see a number of sleek looking fighters engaging the teardrop shaped Covenant fighters he had seen passing by overhead earlier, preventing them from assisting their smaller brethren out.

On the road surrounding them, Marcus also began seeing a lot more people around. All sorts of civilians were running towards the airport, many of them carrying their belongings in a number of suitcases, some of them carrying their children and pets in their arms, and others carrying nothing but the clothes on their backs. All sorts of public transportation vehicles were around to, bus and taxis and trams, filling the roads and bringing with them even more civilians. Directing the traffic and urging people along were what seemed to be just about every single cop in the county.

"Take this next right," Dresden commanded.

Marcus hastily turned to the right, but at the same time, a crowd of civilians suddenly decided they wanted to cross the road and Marcus was forced to slam on the brakes to avoid running them over.

"Damn civilians!" Dresden yelled. "Honk your horn at them!"

Marcus reached up and grabbed the cord to the HEMTT's horn.

 _bwAAAAHHP bwAAAAHHHPP!_

"Hey, get out of the way!" Dresden yelled, poking his head out of the window.

Fortunately, a nearby police officer came running up, and quickly herded the civilians off the road.

"Let's go!"

They headed down the road where it ended at a chain link fence gate guarded by a team of nervous looking soldiers. Just beyond the fence was a large open airport apron. Sitting on the concrete apron were a number of surface-to-air missile launchers, firing their missiles at targets much higher in the sky than Marcus couldn't see.

"Drive us through the gate and get us to those launchers," Dresden instructed as the gate was hastily opened by the soldiers there.

Passing through the gate, Marcus was immediately confronted with a soldier waving his arms. The man dashed out in front of them, forcing Marcus to slam on the brakes as the man gesturing at them to stop. The man stepped to the side and impatiently waited for Marcus to come to a complete stop beside him before running over to Dresden's window. Dresden opened the window.

"WHAT ARE YOU GUYS CARRYING?" Marcus heard the man yell over the sound of explosions, gunfire, and the rumbling of the Rig's engine.

"I got four ASRGAM 10xs and about fifteen cans of 20mil!" Dresden replied. "Where do you want them Technical Sergeant?"

"TAKE THE 20MM CANS AND LOAD THEM INTO THAT WARTHOG OVER THERE!" the Sergeant ordered, pointing at a 4x4 Warthog sitting parked a few meters away from the gate, sitting behind a pile of sandbags. "WE DON'T HAVE ANY SCYTHES OVER HERE, BUT I'LL TAKE THEM OVER TO WHERE THEY'RE NEEDED MYSELF! TAKE THE MISSILES, AND BRING THEM OVER TO GUN FOUR AT THE END OF THE ROW! A CYCLOPS IS DOWN THERE ALREADY; THEY'RE WAITING FOR A RELOAD!"

"You got it Sergeant!" Dresden yelled.

The Sergeant abruptly pressed his hand to his ear and took Marcus a few seconds to realize the man was trying to listen to his headset.

"WHAT?" the Sergeant yelled. "LOUDER! I CAN'T HEAR YOU! WHAT? GOD DAMMIT!"

Lowering his hand, he turned to Dresden. "CAN YOU HANDLE THIS BY YOURSELF SERGEANT?" he asked.

"Yeah, we got this Sergeant," Dresden assured him. "Go do what you got to!"

"THANKS!"

The man ran off and Dresden immediately turned to Marcus.

"Marcus, Orlović, you guys deal with the ammo cans! Marcus, move over, I'll bring the Rig down to gun four and get it unload. Once you guys are finished, wait here, I'll pick you up, and we'll RTB for our next load. Sound good?"

"YOU GOT IT THEO!"

"Yes sir!"

Marcus undid his seatbelt and shoved the driver side door open. He started to climb out, only to almost get plastered by a heavy ammo can that fell to the ground right next to him.

"SORRY!" Orlović yelled, even as he continued to shove the ammo cans off the roof.

Checking to make sure Orlović wasn't about to throw anything else at him, Marcus hastily climbed out of the cab, watching as Dresden quickly took his spot, and grabbed a couple of the cans. He waited until Orlović had climbed out of the cab and dropped to the ground.

"You guys good?" Dresden asked as he buckled his seatbelt and shut the door.

"Yeah!" Orlović yelled.

"Alright, I'll see you in a bit!"

He drove off, leaving Marcus and Orlović standing out in the open.

"Come on bro!" Orlović yelled as he took off running in the direction of the Warthog, ammo cans in hand. Marcus struggled to follow him.

Leaping over the sandbags, they headed towards the Warthog. It was a pretty standard looking Warthog: open roof with no doors and enough spots for three soldiers. The major difference was, instead of the Gatling gun Marcus was used to seeing Warthogs armed with, this one was armed with what looked like an upscaled version of the machine gun Orlović had been using while on the Rig.

"God dammit Chair Force making us do their heavy lifting for them!" Orlović bitched as he hoisted one of the cans and tossed it into the back of the Warthog.

"Chair Force?" Marcus questioned. "You mean the Air Force? What do they have to do with anything?"

"This is an Air Force anti-aircraft artillery battery." Orlović glanced at Marcus. "You didn't know that?"

Marcus shook his head. That did explain why he didn't recognize the rank insignia the Sergeant had been wearing.

Orlović grunted and started to turn away, when he did a quick double take.

"Dude," he began, "where the fuck is your rifle?"

Marcus started, and for the first time, noticed Orlović had his rifle strapped across his back.

"Um… I left it on the Rig," Marcus sheepishly admitted.

"Are you fucking kidding me bro?" Orlović said, sounding incredulous. "Dude, in case you haven't notice, we're in a combat zone. What are you were you going to do if the Covenant started landing infantry here? You think you were going to fight back with what, bad breath and colorful language? Shit! And Sergeant Dresden even told you to keep your rifle with you at all times!"

Marcus winced and felt his face start to redden at the rebuke. He hung his head in shame. "Sorry," he mumbled.

"Well, don't just fucking stand there, go fucking get it!"

Marcus jumped. He dropped the ammo cans he was carrying to the ground and started to take off.

 _ **BOOOOM!**_

"LOOK OUT!"

Marcus looked up to see a large Covenant gunship take a direct hit from a missile to its engines, causing them to flameout. With huge plumes of black smoke trailing it, the gunship immediately started to lose altitude as it plummeted to the ground. To Marcus' dismay and horror, the gunship appeared to flying straight towards him. Seeing such a huge vehicle seemingly headed towards him, Marcus found himself frozen with fear, his brain having a hard time comprehending what he was seeing.

"MARCUS!"

A pair of hands grabbed a hold of him and tossed him to the ground behind the sandbags. Rolling onto his back, Marcus looked up in time to see the smoking vehicle miss him by at least four meters as it soared passed him as it continued its rapid descent to the colony's surface. Hitting the ground with a loud rumble and causing the very earth to shake, it skidded along the apron, filling the air with a very loud and painful _screeching_ noise. It continued forward, throwing sparks and metal shards all over the place as well as leaving deep scratches into the concrete, before with a loud _groan_ of metal, it came to an abrupt halt some thirty meters away.

"Holy shit!" Orlović exclaimed as he pulled himself off the ground and perched himself behind the sandbag wall, eyeballing the crashed gunship carefully. "Did you see that? _Did you fucking see that!?"_

Marcus found he was shaking too much to be able to proper reply, so he merely nodded his head. As he tried to pick himself up off the ground, he felt something wet running down his legs, and he looked down to see he had accidently pissed himself. He quickly crossed his legs before Orlović could see, but fortunately he seemed to busy marveling at the near miss to notice.

" _Olsen! Orlović! Come in, this is Dresden! Olsen, Orlović! Are you guys alright!"_

Orlović raised a finger to his head. "Yeah Theo, we're good!" He glanced at Marcus. "You're good, right?"

Marcus bobbed his head.

" _Oh thank god. Hey Billy! Keep your guard up! The Covenant crew might have survived that!"_

"Oh shit!" Orlović said as he hastily brought his rifle up to his shoulder. He glanced at Marcus, who, without a weapon, could only cower behind the sandbag wall, and then at the machine gun mounted on the Warthog behind them.

Here, take this!" he ordered. "I'm going for the big gun!"

Before Marcus could protest, Orlović shoved his rifle into Marcus' arms and climbed up onto the bed of the Warthog. Marcus could hear him racking the chambering bolt as he took up position.

"Hey, gun up! Get ready for anything!"

Marcus hastily planted his borrowed rifle on top of the sandbags, but his hands were shaking so much, he wasn't sure how good his aim was going to be.

For a few moments they sat there, waiting.

 _CLANG._

A panel on the side of the gunship suddenly opened up, and Marcus could see the silhouette of a small humanoid figure, maybe about a hundred and fifty centimeters talk, standing in the opening.

 _BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!_

Orlović abruptly opened up and whatever he was shooting must have been a hundred times stronger than what was mounted on the Rig because despite his helmet's built in hearing protection, the noise of the muzzle blast was not only devastating to Marcus' hearing, it also left him terror-struck. He found himself involuntarily letting go of Orlović's rifle, letting to drop to the ground, as he slapped both his hands over his ears.

The opening to the wreck was covered in blue blood and guts as the figure essentially exploded. It wasn't enough to deter the rest of the Covenant however, as almost immediately another two creatures of similar appearance and height, though one was wearing orange and the other crimson, appeared in the opening. Marcus could see the green glow of what he assumed was their weapons.

 _BAM! BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!_

Orlović continued to hold down the trigger, hosing the opening with machine gun fire. The figure in orange exploded before it could fully emerge from the ship, but the one in crimson was able to survive long enough for Marcus to catch sight of its hunched back, chitinous skin, and oversized forearms. As it emerged from the ship, it blinked at the sudden change of light, but realizing its mistake, tried to raise its weapon.

 _BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!_

Orlović immediately cut the figure in half before it could fire, but the creature's death distracted Orlović long enough for another figure to emerge from the broken ship. The sight of this creature left Marcus terrified down to his very soul because unlike the other, smaller creatures, Marcus actually knew what type of alien this was: it was an Elite. Clad in matte burgundy colored armor with white accents, the Elite let out a roar of defiance, even as Orlović turned his fire against the Elite.

 _BAMBAMBAMBAM!_

The first burst of machine gun fire was instantly absorbed by a yellow bubble that appeared around the Elite, protecting him from harm and giving him enough time to raise his rifle. The Elite wasn't given a chance to fire though, as Orlović immediately put three rounds through the weapon, destroying it completely; evidently the Elite's shield did not extend far enough to protect his weapons. Still, the Elite was undeterred as he reached down to his belt to pull out a grenade, but at that point, his shield had sustained to much damage and exploded, leaving him exposed. The Elite had just enough time to activate the grenade, when Orlović blew his head clean off his shoulders with his last round.

 _KABOOM!_

Marcus winced as the grenade exploded, showering the ground with body parts and gore.

"Fuck this shit!" Orlović yelled, shoving the empty machine gun away and reaching behind him. To Marcus' surprise, he pulled out a grenade launcher. The launcher must have been sitting in the driver's seat of the Warthog, because otherwise, Marcus had no idea where Orlović had been carrying it.

Raising the grenade launcher up, Marcus watched as Orlović aimed it at the opening on the wreck.

"Frag out!" Orlović yelled, and then fired.

 _BLOOP!_

Marcus watch as the grenade flew through the air, and land about ten meters shy of the actual opening.

 _BOOM!_

Marcus could see Orlović mouthing a bunch of curses as he reloaded, and took aim again, this time actually bring the sights up.

 _BLOOP!_

Again, the grenade fell short, though only five meters this time. Marcus could hear Orlović growling in anger as he reloaded. This time, he took his time, aiming very carefully at the hole, and then firing.

 _BLOOP! BOOM!_

The grenade soared right into the opening, and Marcus could hear the explosion echoing through the entire ship. They both waited a few minutes, to see if anyone responded, but nothing happened.

"Bitch," Marcus heard Orlović mutter. "Hey Marcus! You alright? Bro, you look like you're about to shit yourself."

Marcus didn't want to admit it, but he was a little afraid he might have already gotten past that point. Before he could say anything though…

 _FWOOZ!_

Orlović let out a scream of pain as a bright pink needle grazed across his shoulder, leaving a nasty looking cut, as well as knocking him over. He fell onto the top of the Warthog.

Marcus turned around in time to see another Elite, this one wearing blue armor and welding a weapon with a lot of nasty looking pink needles sticking out from the top of it, emerging from _behind_ the crashed ship.

"Marcus, shoot him!" Orlović yelled as he took cover behind the 20mm ammo cans sitting there. He winced as a couple of pink needles slammed into the can. "Shoot that son of a bitch!"

His hands trembling, Marcus nevertheless reached down and grabbed his rifle off the ground. Pointing it straight at the Elite, Marcus took aim, and then pulled the trigger.

 _click_

"Oh no!" Marcus wailed as he looked over the rifle for the issue. Did he somehow damage the gun when he dropped it?

It abruptly occurred to him he had actually forgotten to remove the safety. He moved to do so but somehow, in his haste, Marcus inadvertently hit the magazine release, and he dumbly stared as the magazine slipped out of the rifle and dropped to the ground with a clatter.

"Why isn't anyone shooting!?"

Marcus looked up to see the Elite was in the process of reloading, and Marcus quickly moved to do the same. He grabbed the magazine off the ground and tried to shove into the magazine well, but his hands were trembling so badly, he kept missing. He finally got it in on his third try and yanked back on the charging handle, only to see the rifle eject a perfectly good round and he felt like smacking himself: Marcus hadn't need to bother with reloading, he had forgotten all about the round in the chamber!

Still, the rifle was finally loaded so he raised the rifle up and pulled the trigger.

 _click_

"What?" Marcus exclaimed, glancing over the rifle to see what was wrong, only to find that, he had somehow managed to insert the magazine in upside down. "Oh no."

Marcus looked up, only to see the Elite had finally reloaded, and was now pointing his weapon directly at Marcus.

 _ **BwAAAAHHHPPPPPPPP!**_

The loud blare of a horn was the only warning the Elite got before an M8888 HEMTT came out of nowhere and slammed right into him. The Elite's weapon was sent flying as he was completely knocked over, before the heavy vehicle ran him over. All five wheels hit the Elite as the HEMTT complete rolled over him. But if that wasn't enough –

 _BEEP BEEP BEEP!_

The HEMTT backed up, running the Elite over once again. The driver door opened and Dresden hopped out.

"Orlović!" Dresden yelled out. "You okay?"

"Yeah, it's just a scratch!" Orlović announced as he picked himself off the ground.

Dresden nodded, and then he zeroed his eyes onto Marcus. "Private Olsen!" he called out and gestured for Marcus to come to him.

Marcus nervously climbed to his feet and slowly towards Dresden, doing his best to not stare at the rapidly cooling body of the Elite.

"You forget something?" Dresden asked him in a surprisingly neutral voice. Before Marcus could answer, Dresden walked over to the HEMTT door and pull out an MA37 assault rifle from the pocket. "What did I tell you to do with this?"

"'To never go anywhere without it,'" Marcus ashamedly recited from memory. Dresden nodded.

"And as soon as we come into a combat zone, what's the first thing you do?"

"I forgot about it," Marcus admitted, staring at his feet. It was at this point, he sort of wished the ground would open him and swallow him whole.

"Exactly. Next time you forget your rifle, I will staple, nail, and superglue your hand to that pistol grip so you won't forget. And trust me: that is not a hyperbole."

Marcus couldn't help but flinch as Dresden leaned in close. Much to his surprise though, instead of continuing to chide him, Dresden, in a rather kindly voice, softly asked him, "Are you alright Marcus? First firefight, I know, can be rather terrifying. Are you okay?"

Marcus quickly bobbed his head, not wanted to think of how much of a disaster his first fight against the Covenant went. He could sense Dresden frowning, but before he could pursue it any further, Orlović came running up.

"Dude, that was fucking wild man!" Orlović bellowed. "Did you see that shit!? Bullets were flying all over the place, I was hosing the Covenant down with the .50cal, but they just kept coming man! They just won't stop! Holy shit!"

"Knock it off Orlović, we don't have time to celebrate," Dresden barked. "Listen, we got to get back to base, now. Word just came down through the radio: we have a lot of incoming."

"Incoming what Sarge?" Orlović gestured around him. "All the fighters have fucked off already!"

"Yeah, they left because of what's coming next!"

"Which is…?"

 _BOOM BOOM BOOM._

Marcus head snapped up at the sound of multiple explosions in the distance.

"What was that?" he nervously asked, looking around and trying to see what was exploding in the distance.

"Sonic booms," Dresden distractedly replied, and Marcus suddenly realized he was looking in the wrong direction: everyone around him was looking straight up into the air. He crane his neck upwards, only to see a massive number of fireballs dropping through the sky. There were hundreds of them. Maybe even thousands.

"What are those?" he gasped.

"Covenant drop pods," Dresden grimly declared as he lowered his head, allowing Marcus to see just how pale he had become.

"God dammit," Marcus heard him whisper, before he looked back up, and Marcus was startled to see his look of fear had instantly been replaced by a look of determination. "Alright gentlemen, listen up: it's time to put on your big boy pants."

"The Covenant ground invasion has just begun."

* * *

1\. A 6x6 Warthog is not a canon vehicle, but one I decided my story needed as for obvious reasons, military logistical vehicles don't really get depicted all that much in science/military fiction. It's nothing fancy; I literally intended it just to be the Halo equivalent of a Deuce and a half, aka, a military cargo truck.

It's intended to be similar in appearance to the standard Warthog from the video games, only with a three man cab versus just the two, the lack of a rear mounted machine, an extended truck bed capable of carrying up to fourteen metric tonnes of cargo, and obviously an extra pair of wheels for better cargo hauling capability.


	14. Chapter 14

**Special Thanks as always to my editor, Darkfire7881**

* * *

 **Chapter 14**

 **Actium, May 6, 2545  
1000**

 _"ODC to NORTHCOM, be advised we're picking massive amounts of Covenant drop pods and drop ships inbound to your AO. ETA, two minutes to impact."_

 _"Copy that ODC, we see them too. Interrogative: approximately where are those craft going to touch down, over?"_

 _"Trajectory of all incoming places them as landing within the southern to western metropolitan areas of the city of Byzas within the Thracia Province, over."_

 _"Solid copy ODC. Any idea on numbers?"_

 _"Uh...satellite network is mostly down, but estimates place Covenant landing force at approximately ten thousand strong within the first wave, with far more to come."_

 _"Understood ODC. NORTHCOM, out. Actium Northern Command to all military headquarters, Covenant landings detected in the southern, south western, and western Byzas metropolitan areas. All military commands are hereby ordered to immediately counterattack - do_ **not** _allow the Covenant to obtain a lodgement!"_

 **XXXXX**

 **Byzas, Thracia Province  
May 6, 2545  
1005**

 **Selene**

 _ **SWOOOOOOSHHHH WABOOM WABOOM!**_

The ground shook as more and more Covenant drop pods landed within the city limits. Looking directly south, maybe less than a thousand meters away, Selene could see smoke rising from where the pods were hitting. The crackling of automatic weapons fire could be heard as the nearest units immediately responded to the Covenant landings.

Selene hunched down in her seat, trying to make herself as small of a target as possible. Despite being surrounded by a dozen men with machine guns, she never felt more vulnerable in her life, more fragile. The air attacks had been bad enough, but at least she could have taken some comfort in the fact she wasn't specifically being targeted. Here, she was riding straight into the belly of the beast where _everyone_ would be a target.

"Come on! We got to go!" Shin muttered from the seat beside her.

"Everybody, get out of the way!" Kingsley yelled through the loud speakers of their police cruiser. Dozens... hundreds even, of civilians were running down the roads and sidewalks in the opposite direction, trying to flee the coming onslaught.

"This is Colonel Paxton(1) of the Thracian Provincial Army," the military officer who had drafted them was saying. Sitting in the front passenger seat of their cruiser, he was busy yelling into his radio, and seemingly not aware of the massive amount of civilians blocking the road. "I want defensive lines and road blocks set up on every intersection of 5th Street, Hague Street, and 9th Street! Designate them as Phase Lines Apache, Iroquois, and Mohawk! Use whatever personnel you've got to man them, and make sure to coordinate with the UNSC and the Actium Armies! What? Yes, military and police! If you have to, grab every male and female civilian of military age, give them a rifle and put them on the line! We have got to contain this situation before the Covenant can get their bearings!"

He tossed the radio back to the man wedged in the seat between him and Kingsley, before glancing over his shoulder and addressing the soldier sitting right behind Selene. "Lieutenant Forney, get my wife on the phone and instruct her to take the kids and go south! Do not attempt to join me in the city, Byzas is now a war zone!"

"Yes sir!"

"Officer Kingsley, pull over to the right!" Paxton ordered. "Striker Actual to all Striker victors, we're setting up headquarters, right here! Everybody else, dismount!"

"You heard the Colonel!" the soldier riding in the very back with his legs sticking out of the trunk immediately bellowed. "Everybody: _out!_ "

Selene popped open her door and hopped out, mostly spurned on by all the other soldiers behind her. She stepped to the side as they, along with all the other soldiers who had been following them in Warthogs, began unpacking the truck and setting up weapons, radios, computers, and other electronic equipment. As they worked, Selene looked around at the intersection they had stopped at. To her surprise, a number of soldiers were already there, setting up a road block barricade made out of a combination of abandoned civilian cars and sandbags.

"HANGING!"

"FIRE!"

She jumped in fright as she heard an explosion go off behind her, and she glanced over the street to see a couple of mortars had been set up in the middle of the street running perpendicular to the intersection. A number of soldiers were firing mortars in the direction of the Covenant landings. She hoped they were raining all sorts of hell on them; every Covenant soldier killed potentially meant at least one more civilian would be able to make it out alive today.

"Officer Kingsley! Put your cruiser with the rest of the barricade, it's no good to us now!" Paxton bellowed. To the soldiers already assembled there, he yelled out, "Colonel Paxton, Thracian Provincial Army! Who's in charge here?"

"That would be me sir!" among the group setting up the barricade, a young woman raised her hand and walked over, snapping off a salute as she did. "2nd Lieutenant Zahara, 1st Brigade, 53rd Armored, UNSC Army. I have with me elements of my dismounted mechanized infantry platoon, along with a mortar section from one of the Actium Army's weapon's companies!"

"What's the situation!?"

"We're hitting the Covenant DZ with everything we got sir, but those drop pods are hitting the ground faster than we can kill them! Covies have already overrun first, third, and fourth streets, and we're trying to hold fifth! We're setting up a tertiary defensive position here, as well as every single intersection on this road, fifteen blocks in either direction!"

"HANGING!"

"FIRE!"

"Alright, as you were!" Paxton barked and Zahara saluted, before running back to her men. Another soldier, one that had rode with Selene and the others, came running up.

"Sir, with all due respect, I think we're setting up your headquarters a little too close to the frontlines. May I suggest we pull back at least another three blocks?"

"Negative Sergeant Major! We need all the soldiers we can get our hands on manning these phase lines, and that includes us! We also need someone of sufficient rank to pull the chain on all the firepower we can get onto that drop zone, as well as coordinate the defensive actions of _three_ separate armies! It has got to be us! Tell Major Hudgens I want 1st Battalion on our left flank, 3rd on our right, and 2nd in reserve! Get our MP platoon to take up defensive positions at the barricade! BPD!"

Selene jumped and realized Paxton was staring right at her. "Yes sir!?"

"Get these _fucking_ civilians out of my line of fire!"

"On it sir!"

Selene ran around until she found Shin by the barricade, helping a couple of soldiers set up what looked like one of those machines that fired tennis balls on a practice court.

"Shin!" she called out. "You still helping us, or you with the soldiers now?"

"Dunno," he said in a surprisingly calm voice, despite the chaos that rained around them. "Let me ask. Hey Lieutenant Forney! You want me helping you guys, or you want me with the BPD?"

"You're not equipped for frontline combat Airman!" Forney immediately replied, even before Shin finished talking. "Help the BPD!"

"Well, you heard the Lieutenant," Shin said with a nonchalant shrug. "Guess I'm your man. What are we doing?"

"We got to get these civilians out of here!"

"Really? Well, that seems like a waste of time. Bet you most of these civilians are going to be dead in the next ten, fifteen minutes."

Selene turned to him, shocked by his callousness. But before she could comment on it, Kingsley came running up.

"Riddle! We got to go! We got to get as many of these civilians out of here!"

"Where are we supposed to bring them?"

"Just get them over the military barricade! We got city buses coming by in a few minutes one block down to pick them up, and deliver them straight to the evacuation zones!"

"Roger that LT!"

Shooting one last disgusted glare at Shin, Selene took off running. Vaulting over the barricade, she ran towards the nearest group of civilians.

"HEY!" she screamed, waving her hands. "EVACUATE THIS WAY!"

She gestured over her shoulder. At once, a group of civilians turned and ran towards her.

"Come on!" she yelled, urging them over the barricade. "Keep on moving this way, this way!"

One young lady carrying a small child in her arms and holding onto the hand of another paused as she ran by.

"Where are we supposed to go once we're through!?" she asked over the sound of her son's crying.

"City buses are coming to pick everyone up and deliver you directly to the evacuation zone! Go down one more block!"

"Thank you! Jason, come with mommy!"

"Hang on, I got you!"

Swooping down, Selene grabbed the kid and ran towards the barricade with the lady in tow. Lifting the boy onto the top of the barricade, she started to lower him to the ground on the other side, only to realize she was a bit too short to reach. She glanced in the direction where the soldiers were busy setting up boxes of ammo.

"Hey! Someone grab this kid from me!" she yelled at them, but they were too busy to pay attention. "HEY!"

"I got him."

Selene looked up in surprise to see Shin grabbed the kid from her and gently depositing him onto the ground. Saving her comments for the moment, Selene grabbed the other kid from the lady's arms, handed him over to Shin, and then turning around to help the lady over the barrier. Once all three were safely on the other side and on their way, then she turned to Shin.

"I thought you didn't care about these people?" she accused.

"I didn't say that," Shin calmly denied. "I just thought there were other priorities to be dealt with at the moment. Priorities that could save much more than just a handful of civilians. But if this is what we're doing, this is what we're doing. What do you want me to do?"

Selene was willing to bet that was not at all what Shin had intended, but at the moment, she just didn't have the time to argue. "You stay there on that side of the barrier! Anyone who needs help crossing, I'll direct them to you!"

"Sounds good to me."

Nodding, Selene ran back out onto the street. "Everybody! Come this way! THIS WAY!"

Another large crowd of civilians turned in her direction and started streaming her way as she gestured wildly at them. Selene stepped aside to allow them room to pass, looking up in alarm as the sound of the fighting in the distance was rapidly growing in intensity.

 _ **SWOOOOOOSHHHH WABOOM!**_

Selene stumbled as more Covenant drop pods came screaming in, causing everything to shake as they hit the ground and sending plumes of smoke up into the air. Looking up, she saw a number of civilians fall to the ground, including one older looking lady who dropped the suitcases she was awkwardly carrying, one of which burst open upon hitting the ground and spewing its contents all over the road.

"Crap!" Selene yelped before running over to the lady to help out.

The lady was on her hands and knees, desperately trying to recover all her stuff, but it wasn't easy as another crowd of civilians were running by and distracted by their fear, they kept accidently kicking her stuff out of the way.

Shoving her way through the crowd, Selene dropped to her knees to try and help the lady out. The lady looked up, noticed Selene's uniform, and seemed to perk up.

"Thank you officer!" she yelled.

"No problem!" Selene automatically yelled back, until she noticed what she was actually throwing back into the lady's bag: squeaky toys, fancy costumes, cans of designer dog food...

Looking at the three suitcases the lady was carrying, Selene realized that at least two of the three appeared to be packed with all the same things.

"No offense ma'am, but I don't think you're really going to need all this stuff!" Selene called out.

"Oh, they're not for me dearie, they're for Mr. Pickles!" the lady lifted up her last bag, causing Selene to realize it wasn't a suitcase like she had originally thought, but some sort of carrying bag for a small lap dog.

"Ma'am, you do realize there's not going to be that much room on the evacuation transports? I don't think you're going to be able to bring all these bags with you!"

"But Mr. Pickles needs them! You see, he's got a very weak stomach, and can only eat specific types of food, so this bag has all his grain free salmon that he loves so much! We don't know if we're going to be sent somewhere cold or someplace warm, so I had to bring his jacket that he looks so cute in! And –"

 _SWOOSH SWOOSH SWOOSH!_

Selene reflexively ducked, and then looked up as two military VTOLs passed by overhead, firing rockets in the direction of the landing site. Emptying their magazines, they started to turn away, but then a bright green streak came up from the ground and smashed into one of them. The VTOL immediately caught fire and went spiraling to the ground, disappearing behind some of the buildings while the other VTOL made a hasty retreat.

" – and these are his treats for being such a good boy!" the lady was saying.

"Ma'am!" Selene yelled, cutting the lady off. "Listen to me! You can _not_ take all this stuff with you!"

Ignoring the lady's astonished gasp, Selene grabbed her bags and hurtled them to the side.

"Take your dog and run! NOW!" Selene screamed.

The lady drew herself up in a huff. "How rude," she chided, but thankfully, did as she was told. Gathering her pet dog, the lady ran off in the direction of the barricade.

Selene looked up in alarm as the sound of the fighting continued to grow, not just in intensity, but proximity. And yet, somehow the stream of civilians headed her way had yet to die down. In fact, their numbers seemed to be _growing._ How could there be this many people in the city?

"OFFICER! OFFICER!"

Selene's head snapped up as a young man, who looked to about thirteen or fourteen, came running up to her.

"Officer, give me a gun!" he demanded.

"What?"

"Give me a gun, I want to help out!" the man, or rather boy, eagerly demanded. "I can help!"

"TOMMY! TOMMY!"

Another man came charging up the street with a young girl in tow. Based on how similar he looked to the boy, Selene felt it was safe to assume this was the young boy's father.

"Tommy, what are you doing? We have to leave, _now!"_

"You leave dad!" Tommy insisted. "I'm staying! I can help out! Just give me a gun! My granddad showed me how to shoot a gun once, I know what I'm doing! I can help!"

"Tommy, these are professional soldiers out there and they do not need a little kid running around distracting them!"

"I'm not a little kid dad! I'm fourteen; I'm probably going to be drafted soon enough, so why does it matter if I start a few years early?"

"God dammit Tommy, this is not up for discussion! We are leaving, right now!"

"Tommy, we need to leave!" his little sister cried out.

"No!" Tommy insisted. "I. Can. Help! Officer, just give me a gun!"

"Officer, no!" Tommy's dad yelled before Selene could say anything. "You cannot give this boy a gun! I am his legal guardian and I am not giving permission for him to get drafted!"

"It's not up to you dad!" Tommy began to say, but Selene quickly waved her arms, catching their attention.

"LISTEN!" she bellowed. "I don't have time for this shit! Kid, no I'm not giving you a gun! This is not a fucking video game, you don't have the training or the equipment to hope to stand against the Covenant! Listen to your dad and get the hell out of here!"

"Tommy, come on!" his sister insisted, tugging on his hand, but Tommy refused to relent.

"I don't have to have a gun then!" Tommy persisted. "I can help out in other ways! I can be like, a stretcher bearer or something! Or a… a powder monkey! Yeah! I can give you guys ammo and stuff when you run out!"

"No means no kid!" Selene screamed.

 _ **BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRTTTTT!WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!**_

Selene jumped in surprise as the sound of a very big gun overhead. She looked up to see some sort of military jet pulling out a strafing run and she immediately turned back to Tommy and his family.

"You see that!" she roared. "That's what we need more than infantry! So unless you can fly one of those things, the only thing you're going to be is a liability! GO! Get out of here, now!"

Tommy didn't look convinced but nevertheless he didn't put up a fight as his father tugged on his shoulder, pulling him in the direction of the evacuation zone. All three of them darted off, leaving Selene alone.

Pulling out her sidearm to just to double check it was still there and that the kid didn't somehow steal it, Selene looked around. The stream of civilians was finally slowing down, but in their stead, a large amount of uniformed soldiers were coming down the street. It was getting a bit harder to see as all the smoke and dust from the landing site was beginning to filter through the streets, but as they drew closer, Selene could see they were all wounded in some way or another.

"Come on guys, come on!" she yelled, trying to urge them on as they streamed past.

All sorts of soldiers were being carried on stretchers, or their buddies' backs. Others were capable of walking, but they had to be supported by their comrades. Some of the soldiers' injuries had already been dressed and bandaged up, but many of them hadn't. There were all sorts of third degree burns, vicious gashes, and there was at least one guy whose entire leg had been blown off. Selene tried to avoid staring at some of the more horrific wounds, but given how many of them there were, it was almost impossible to avoid.

"CAN I GET SOME HELP HERE!?"

Selene looked up to see two wounded soldiers, one of which was leaning heavily on the other, staggering down the street. Holstering her sidearm, Selene ran down the street to help out. Grabbing the arm of the more heavily wounded man, she wrapped it around her shoulders, picking up some of his weight. The man, whose face was covered in blood and had a number of bandages wrapped around his abdomen, barely reacted.

"Thank you!" the other man called out.

Selene glanced in his direction and to her horror, she realized the soldier had been hit in the side of his face, causing his eyeball to pop out of its socket, but not severing it, leaving it to hang off the man's face by the optical nerve. She quickly turned away, doing her best not to be sick.

"How bad is the fighting?" she asked instead.

"I don't know!" the soldier admitted. "It's getting harder to see! All those drop pods keep throwing more and more smoke into the air!"

"RUN! RUN!"

Selene jerked in alarm, only to see a crazed looking soldier staggering down the street, blood streaming out of his ears, screaming at the top of his lungs.

"RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!" he was screeching. "THEY'RE GOING TO MURDER YOU! THEY'RE GOING TO MURDER US ALL! THE REAPER IS HERE! DEATH HAS COME FOR US ALL! THE APOCALYPSE IS UPON US! RUN! **RUN!"**

Selene could see a couple of medics emerge from the barricade and run towards the soldier. Together, they managed to tackle the man, and began to quickly dress his wounds.

"RUN! SAVE YOURSELVES!" the man hollered, even as one of the medic injected him with something.

"REPENT! REPENT!" he continued to scream as Selene walked past.

"Shin! I need help!" she called out as she reached the barricade. She could see Shin extending his arms and she quickly passed the wounded soldier over to him, waiting until he had grabbed him before letting go.

"Thanks! Good luck officer!" The other man called out, even as he clambered over the barricade.

"You too!" Selene yelled at the departing soldier's back.

"HANGING!"

"FIRE!"

 _ **WHOOMP!**_

"ROUNDS COMPLETE!"

"ALRIGHT GUYS, PACK IT UP AND FALL BACK!"

Selene looked over shoulder. The mortars had stopped firing and the soldiers manning there had started to break them down, packing them up and getting them ready for transport. She briefly wondered if she should go help them, but some of the mortar stuff looked rather sensitive, and she didn't want to accidentally break anything.

 _ **SWOOOOOOSHHHH WABOOM!**_

Another few Covenant drop pods came screaming in, this time coming the closest they had yet so far. As Selene glanced down the street, she was startled to find that the stream of wounded soldiers had ended, and instead, there were now _un_ wounded soldiers running down the street.

"Fall back!" she heard one yell while she spotted another turn around and fired an extended burst from the hip back up the street. At this point, the smoke had reached the barricade, making it impossible to see what the soldier was shooting at.

"Riddle!"

Selene jumped as a hand grabbed her shoulder, and she turned to see Kingsley standing behind her.

"Come on, we got to get behind that barricade, the Covenant are coming!"

Selene nodded and tossed herself over the barricade, and found herself situated right next to Lieutenant Zahara.

"Copy that Hoplite 1-1!" the woman was yelling into her radio. "Fall back to tertiary positions, now! Colonel! Secondary defense have fallen! There nothing standing between us and the Covenant now!"

"Got it! All soldiers! Take up firing positions! Ready your weapons, but don't fire until I give the word!"

Selene looked around as a number of soldiers dashed up to the barricade and began setting up.

"Shouldn't we be running?" Selene asked Kingsley. "We're not soldiers."

"I was one once," Kingsley reminded her. "So I'm staying! Besides, they could use an extra gun!"

"Then I'm staying too!"

Turning to face down the street, Selene pulled out her shotgun. She glanced at her less-than-lethal shotgun, and then at all the machine guns all the other soldiers were sporting, and she suddenly realized how foolish she was being. What was she doing? She didn't belong here. She was a cop, not a soldier.

But she had already committed, and she wasn't about to back out now.

Still, a little bit of extra firepower wouldn't hurt…

"I need a gun," she muttered, looking around for a spare. "I need a gun."

"Hell. Just wait a couple of minutes. There'll be plenty lying on the ground soon enough."

Selene jumped in surprise, and glanced to her left to see Shin taking up position beside her, holding an M6G handgun.

"Where'd you get that!?"

"Took it off one of the walking wounded back there," Shin reported, and Selene mentally cursed at herself for not having the foresight to do the same. "Surprised to see you sticking around; this doesn't seem to be your sort of thing."

Selene opened her mouth to reply, but before she could, Paxton screamed out, "MAKE READY!"

She quickly looked downrange. The street was now completely covered in smoke and dust, limiting visibility to maybe about fifteen meters. The sound of fighting continued to ring out, but it was muted, as if it was taking place several blocks away. Even the sound of the incoming drop pods seemed to have died down.

"Steady!" Paxton yelled out, but his voice seemed somewhat tempered.

Selene strained her ears, listening for movement, but there was nothing but the sound of blowing wind. Then she heard it. The rhythmic thumping of hundreds of feet charging straight towards them...

"raaaaaaaaaaAAAAA _AHHHHHH_ **HHHHHHH** _ **HHHHHH!"**_

Emerging from the smoke came all sorts of monstrous creatures from deep within the Covenant Empire! Howling, screaming, and waving all sorts of weapons around, they charged headlong straight at the assembled UNSC forces.

 **"FIRE!"**

The entire line exploded as every single soldier simultaneously opened up with everything they had! Selene nearly dropped her weapon in pain, that's how loud it was, but she managed to hold onto it. She started searching for something to shoot at.

Despite their reckless charge, the Covenant weren't stupid. Knowing they were going to be charging straight at an entire firing squad, the entire Covenant front ranks consisted of twisted, evil-looking, vulture-like creatures all carrying some sort of glowing energy shield. The row behind them consisted of much larger creatures, firing over their heads. Clad in blue and crimson armor, their most noticeable features were the four separate mandibles attached to their faces, as well as the fact they all appeared to be equipped with personal energy shields. Despite all this, there were still gaps in their defenses for the bullets to get through.

Selene desperately looked around as the soldiers around her fired everything they had at the incoming mass. All sorts of Covenant soldiers were falling dead to the ground, but the Covenant were giving as good as they got, shooting back with their blue and green lasers. Most of the rounds shattered against the barricade, but every now and then a soldier would collapse to the ground, a smoking hole in his or her chest.

Selene spotted one vulture-like creature advancing down the street, looking the other way. He had his shield hoisted in front of him and was firing his pistol over it, but his flank was exposed to Selene's fire. She immediately lifted her shotgun and fired -

 _KABAM! klikt. KABAM! klikt. KABAM!_

\- only to see her beanbag rounds bounce harmlessly off the creature's armor, to the point where the vulture-like thing didn't even notice he was taking fire.

"Oh, fuck this!" Selene yelped, tossing the shotgun aside. Pulling out her sidearm, she leveled it and opened fire.

Bullets shattered against the Covenant's armor, actually causing it to crack and doing far more damage compared to her beanbag rounds, but even still the 10mm hollow points failed to penetrate. Selene cursed, vaguely remembering Shin warning her something like that might happen as the vulture ducked and looked around to see where he was taking fire from.

He spotted Selene, ineffectively unloading her pistol on him, and he spun around, but then one of Selene's rounds hit the armor the vulture was wearing on his forearm. The bullet ricocheted off and slammed into his neck. Dark purple liquid immediately began gushing from the hole, and the vulture quickly brought his shield hand to plug the wound while at the same time, he also brought his weapon to bear as Selene's pistol locked empty.

"Oh crap!" Selene yelped as she started to reload. But before she could finish -

 _BANG BANG BANG!_

Selene jumped as Zahara fired a burst into the vulture from beside her, pumping three holes into the creature's chest. The creature collapsed, and Selene turned to Zahara to thank her, but the Lieutenant had already turned away.

"Hoplite-1 to Panther-6, fire support WARNO incoming, over!" she was yelling into her radio. "Panther-6, do you copy? Panther-6 - _GUK_!"

The lieutenant let out a grunt as a pink needle speared her right through the throat, and exited out the other side. Blood began gushing from both holes as Zahara bonelessly collapsed to the ground, a look of surprise and shock plastered across her face.

"Lieutenant!" the young soldier crouched beside her screamed. " _Medic!_ "

Selene holstered her weapon and hastily crouch-walked over to the fallen soldier to see if she could help out. It didn't look good. A puddle of blood was already forming underneath Zahara's prone body, and her breath was coming out in short spurts. She abruptly coughed, spitting out a large amounts of blood. Then she started choking.

"Oh no!" Selene cried and quickly made her way to Zahara's side but by the time she got there, Zahara had already stopped breathing.

"Lieutenant! _Lieutenant!_ " the other soldier yelled, crying and shaking Zahara's body inefficiently, but it looked to Selene as if Zahara had already died. She wondered if it was even worth trying to administer first aid, but then again, she was a cop, and her department's policy was that police officers were to administer first aid to any injured person and _continue_ to administer first aid until the EMTs could arrive and formally declare the person dead. So instead, Selene quickly removed the lieutenant's chest plate and immediately began doing chest compressions.

"One, two, three," Selene silently counted as she pushed down on Zahara's chest. "Four, five, six..."

 _FWOOZ!_

A plasma bolt splattered against the barrier next to her head, causing Selene to flinch, and she looked up to see the Covenant were steadily advancing towards them, undeterred by the amount of fire thrown at them. While she wasn't supposed to stop administering aid, she also realized she couldn't do it under these conditions. She had to move Zahara to safety first.

Standing up while at the same time, trying to keep as low to the ground as possible, Selene grabbed a hold of Zahara's webbing and tried to move her, but at that point Zahara was just dead weight and Selene found it impossible to move the body by herself.

 _"Hey!"_ she screamed at the other soldier, the one who initially noticed Zahara getting hit. Unlike everyone else, this one soldier wasn't doing anything but was instead, curled up in a ball and rocking back and forth.

Selene cursed, recognizing the signs of someone suffering from psychological shock.

 _"Hey!"_ she tried again, but as expected, he didn't respond.

There was technically a laundry list of things she was supposed to do to help someone in psychological shock, but Selene found she didn't have the patience to try and go through it all, so she ran up to the man and slapped him across the face, hoping it would work as well as it did in the movies. It surprisingly did as the man immediately turned to her with a blank look on his face.

"Hey! What's your name soldier?" Selene asked, hoping to keep his attention on her and not the body behind her.

"Wilks," the soldier whimpered. "Private... Private Wilks(2)."

"Private Wilks! Officer Riddle, BPD! Hey, listen! I don't have the medical training to deal with this!" she yelled, pointing at Zahara. "We got to get her to a hospital, otherwise she's going to die, but I can't pick her up by myself! I need your help! Can you do that?"

Wilks blankly stared at her. "A hospital?" he asked.

"Yes! A hospital! You know, a, uh..." she tried to think of what that one TV show always called it. "A MASH?"

"Oh!" Wilks excitedly said. "You mean a hospital!"

If the situation wasn't so serious, Selene would have rolled her eyes. As it were though, all she did was quickly bob her head.

"Yes! A hospital! Come on, we need to go!"

Wilks leapt to his feet and ran over to Zahara.

"Grab her shoulders!" Selene commanded, grabbing Zahara by the legs. Together they lifted the body up and started heading down the block.

They were making good headway when the sound of heavy thumping filled the air.

"HUNTERS!" someone screamed and Selene turned around to see several _massive_ creatures charging down the street straight towards the barricade. Each creature looked like one of the armored knights from old, only these _things_ were about three to four meters tall, had bright orange skin, were completely clad in dark blue armor, and while they had some tower shields strapped to their arms, instead of swords, they had _humongous_ arm cannons.

The soldiers manning the barricade all scattered as the Hunters smashed into it, cutting through the cars like a hot knife through butter. One unfortunate soldier found himself landing right between one of the Hunter's legs, and he quickly raised his rifle and emptied the magazine, only to have all the bullets bounce off. In retaliation, the Hunter lifted his shield and swiftly brought it down on the man's head. All Selene heard was a terror-filled scream before it was abruptly cut off as the shield literally cut the man vertically in half.

At that sight, Selene lost whatever courage she had manage to build up.

"FUCK! THIS!" she screamed, dropping Zahara's body and running in the opposite direction. Behind her, she could hear the Hunters firing their weapons.

 _ **BOOOOSSSSHHHHH! BOOOOOSSSSHHHH!**_

"RIDDLE, LOOK OUT!" someone screamed.

Selene glanced over her shoulder. The last thing she saw was a stream of radiative green fire headed her way.

 _ **BOOOOOSSSSHHHH!**_

* * *

1\. Yes, that is intended to be the same Paxton whose lovely wife we met back in chapter 7.

2\. Some of you might remember Private Wilks from my other fic, _Missing in Action_ (maybe not; no one seemed to have picked up my reference to Norén in chapter 7, and Wilks was a far more minor character. It was also a very long time ago.) At any case, for anyone who is curious or simply wishes to remind themselves, Wilks appears in chapter 2 (my chapter 2; has labelled it chapter 3 because of the prologue) as one of the guys helping Moss man the .50cal soon after they crash landed on Actium. That chapter also details Wilks' fate. And now you know how his day started!


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

 **Town of Newington, South of Byzas  
Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
1016**

 **Tariq**

 _ **BOOOOOSSSSHHHH!**_

"INCOMING!"

"Reverse, REVERSE!"

 _ **CLANG!**_

Tariq grimaced as the fuel rod cannon slammed into Lillian's lower glacis plate before she could fully back down behind the hill. The entire tank shook and his screen turned to static as the radiation from the explosion caused all the electronic devices inside the tank to go on the fritz.

"Private, status report!" Noble bellowed.

"We're good First Sergeant! No penetration!"

"Get us back up!"

Corona quickly threw the tank forward and as Lillian slowly crested the hill, Tariq glanced at his monitor. The system had almost finished resetting, and would probably be back up in a second, but Tariq didn't have a second. As soon as Lillian reached the top of the hill, Tariq switched over to his backup sights and pulled the trigger.

 _RATATATATATA!_

He hosed down the general area where he remembered the fuel rod coming from with his coax, but the shooter had long since disappeared from sight so Tariq wasn't sure if he had gotten him. With no body to account for, Tariq was going to assume the shooter was still active and was about to follow up his burst with a HEAT round, but his turret controls got seized by someone else.

"Heavy weapons, top left window, building with the red roof! Eight hundred meters!" Noble roared.

Tariq glanced at his sights, but couldn't see the shooter. But considering Noble had much better sights than he did, he was inclined to trust her callout.

"On the way!" Tariq roared and pulled the trigger.

Lillian jerked as her cannon recoiled, and Tariq watched as the room in question exploded.

"Troops in the open!" Corona suddenly bellowed. "One of them has got a heavy weapon!"

Tariq looked around, but with an entire town sprawled out in front of them, he had no idea where Corona was talking about.

"Give me a location, I don't got no eyes!"

"I got 'em, I'm marking them with the RWS!" Noble roared.

 _BAMBAMBAM!_

Tariq swiveled his optics around to spot the fall of Noble's tracers. He spotted the target in question, three Skirmishers dashing across the street, one of which was carrying a plasma launcher. The weapon itself probably wasn't heavy enough to damage the armor on an MBT, but it could potentially do a lot of damage to Lillian's more sensitive equipment, like her optics, making the Skirmishers worth taking out.

"Alright, I see them, I'm engaging!" Tariq declared, bring the turret to bear and opening up with the coax.

Tracers skipped off the ground and one of the Skirmishers unexpectedly seemed to trip and fall to the ground. Before he could get up, Tariq hit him a couple more times with his coax, making sure he stayed down, but unfortunately the Skirmisher he hit was not the one with the plasma launcher. The other two were able to make it across the street and they quickly dashed into the nearest building and out of sight.

"Gunner, drop fifteen, target that building with HEAT and fire when ready!"

Tariq quickly dropped his sights. "On the way!"

The main cannon recoiled again, and the entire front of the building exploded, but Tariq was too distract by a green streak headed their way to notice.

"INCOMING!"

"Back up!" Noble screamed.

Corona slammed the tank into reverse and Lillian jerked before immediately rolling backwards and behind the crest of the hill as the fuel rod cannon can flying in. The hill shook as the fuel rod exploded, sending mounds of steam into the air as the snow was vaporized by the intense heat.

Without waiting for an order from Noble, Corona threw the tank into gear and advanced forward, moving Lillian into the same spot she occupied only moments before.

"I think that shell came from the clock tower!" Noble declared. "Gunner, put a shell into it and see what comes out!"

"Got it!" Tariq hastily loaded his weapons. "On the way!"

As the tower collapsed, their radio abruptly crackled.

 _"05 to 06, we are in position, ready for your assault, over!"_

 _"Copy that 05! Cataphract Actual to Cataphracts 1 and 3, you are cleared to begin your advance on the objective! Sweep and clear!"_

"This is 07, we copy your traffic; we're advancing on the mission objective now!" Noble immediately said into the radio. "Driver, forward! Take us into town! Gunner, you're weapons free; the entire town has been declared hostile so you see movement, you assume Covenant, and you shoot it! Don't wait for my approval!"

"Copy!"

"I'm going up top!"

Noble popped open the hatch over her head and Tariq let out a slight shiver as the cold winter air started filtering into the tank. He glanced over his shoulder to see Noble strapping herself in, with the top half of her body sticking out of the tank.

Lillian started driving downhill and Tariq quickly looked forward, scanning the town ahead of them for movement. He could see the tracers from 3rd Platoon skipping all over the place as they fired on the town, but he couldn't see what they were shooting at and Tariq was a bit reluctant to just start shooting at random, especially since they weren't going to be resupplied until the town had been captured. And they were still a long way from accomplishing that.

 _"Driver, try and match your speed with the rest of 3rd Platoon!"_ Noble yelled over the intercom. _"Maintain the integrity of the line!"_

 _"3-3, this is 3-1, you're drifting, what the fuck, get back here!"_

 _"This is 3-3. The problem is 3-2. Hey! 3-2! Maintain your spacing, god dammit! 07, you still with us?"_

" _Copy! Driver, hold back just a little to let the IFVs catch up,"_ Noble ordered, then paused. _"Actually... hey Sergeant Helmand! Are the IFVs supposed to be on the line with the rest of us or hanging back a bit?"_

"Let them hang back a bit!" Tariq yelled over his shoulder. "They don't have as much frontal armor as we do, so we want to make sure the tanks are what gets hit first, at least until we get to within a hundred meters of the town!"

 _"Okay! In that case, Driver, speed up just a little!"_

Tariq noticed Helmand glance in his direction as he stepped on the accelerator, but he ignored him.

 _"Hey! 07! Enemy target on the top of that roof with the penis shaped attic window! You see him?"_

" _Ah… negative! Gunner, you have any idea what 3-1's talking about?"_

"I don't see any movement, but I think I got the window! Firing a burst!" Tariq reported as he swiveled the turret around and fir his coax.

 _"No no! Go up more, up!"_

Tariq angled up more.

 _"That's it, squirt that shit down!"_

 _"INCOMING!"_

A fuel rod cannon projectile slammed into 3-3 holding position just to their right. The explosion washed over the tank and through his periscopes, Tariq could see 3-3's TC ducking his head back inside. He spun his turret around, trying to spot where the shot came from.

 _"3-3, status?"_ Noble demanded.

 _"We're okay, just a little singed! Fuel rod hit our mantlet; no penetration, but explosion might have damaged our main gun!"_

" _Stick to using your coax and RWS until the engies(1) can take a look at it!"_

" _Roger that 07."_

" _Did anyone see where that shot came from!?"_

 _"This is Dragoon 2-2, we got eyes on! Follow our tracers!"_

To their right and slightly behind them, Tariq could see one of their mechanized infantry support IFVs firing their main cannon. He watched as the 40mm shells flew through the air and slam into one of the buildings in the town below, punching holes into the wall but not knocking it down.

 _"Someone hit that building with HEAT!"_

 _"07's got it!"_ Noble said. _"Gunner, hit that building! Left twelve!"_

Tariq rotated his turret around. "On target!"

 _"Send it!"_

"On the way!"

 _ **BOOM!**_

The wall exploded, opening up that side of the building and Tariq quickly fired a couple of machine gun burst into the building. At first, he couldn't see any movement and was about to turn away, when a small team of Covenant infantry burst out from an entrance on the side of the building.

 _"Foot mobiles in the open, left of the building! I tally one Elite with a fuel rod gun! Gunner, load up a canister, set the warhead to airburst, and see if you can't drop that ugly bastard and take out that weapon at the same time!"_

Grunting in acknowledgement, Tariq hastily hit a few buttons, checked his laser finder for the range, and quickly plugged the numbers in. As soon as his status light turned green, he jammed down on the trigger. "On the way!"

 _ **BOOM!**_

The canister round exploded right over the heads of the Covenant infantry. Tariq couldn't help but let out a laugh as the Elite was torn to shreds by the tungsten pellets. The pellets also managed to hit the fuel rod cannon the Elite had been carrying and even from this distance, Tariq could see the hole in the side of the receiver, permanently disabling the weapon.

 _"Good shot Gunner!"_ Noble complimented, sounding impressed. _"That's one less anti-armor weapon we have to worry about! Let's find the others!"_

 _ **PSSSSHHHH! CLANG!**_

Tariq jerked as another fuel rod cannon was abruptly fired from the town and slam into 3-1's tank.

" _Shit! Of course, right after I said something!"_ Noble spat. _"You see where that came from?"_

"Negative, there's too many fucking windows man!" Tariq swore. "I'm searching now!"

"How many fucking AT weapons did the Covies bring with them!?" Tariq muttered under his breath as he fired his coax at a potential hiding spot.

"TC, 3-1 is dropping out of formation!" Corona warned. "What do you want me to do?"

" _Don't stop, keep advancing!"_ Noble ordered. _"3-1, 07, status?"_

 _"07, 3-1. We got hit in our front left track, its dragging ass. Fuck! Yeah, track is fucked, we're not going to be able to maintain our position in the formation."_

" _Understood 3-1! Okay, hold back! Taipan 1-4, move to support 3-1. Everyone else, let's go, continue the advance! Keep the pressure up guys, we're almost there!"_

Glancing at his side periscope, Tariq could see one of their two assigned combat engineer breaching vehicles maneuvering to go assist 3-1. He wasn't too sure what they could do, as they were combat engineers and not mechanical engineers, but he supposed they could provide cover while 3-1 attempted to enact repairs.

 _"07, this 06!_ " Lightfoot suddenly yelled.

 _"Go for 07!"_

 _"07, be advised, we've got an Air Force strike coming in, center of town! Time to target, one minute!"_

 _"Copy that 06! Okay, Driver! Slow it down just a bit, let's try and avoid getting hit by our own side! 07 to all Cataphract-3 vehicles, we got an airstrike inbound, one mike!"_

 _ **SWOOSH SWOOSH SWOOSH! BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM!**_

A series of Anvil II rockets came streaking in, striking somewhere in the center of the town. Tariq glanced up to see a pair of Air Force AV-19 "SkyHawks" come flying in, firing rockets and autocannons.

"That wasn't one minute," Tariq said, throwing up his hands in exasperation. "Damn Zoomies can't even read the time right. And who the fuck even called these guys in anyways!?"

 _"Must have been the strike we tried calling in ten minutes ago,"_ Noble reported. _"Actium Air Force was supposed to have provided us with a squadron of gunships for support, only they weren't in position by the time we were ready."_

"Well, they're in position now," Tariq said with a disgusted snort. "Fifteen minutes fucking late, as usual. Typical Zoomies: always showing up after the battle is over! You know, it's bad enough dealing with the damn Chair Force, but now we also got to deal with the Cunt Munchers too!?"

 _"Focus Sergeant!"_ Noble snapped. _"Let's take advantage of this suppressing fire. All gunners, this is 07, slow down your rates of fire, try and conserve ammo! Driver, forward! Get us in closer!"_

Lillian surged ahead and Tariq glanced up to see the SkyHawks clearing the airspace. Seconds later, yellow streaks began filling the air. Tariq recognized them as 120mm artillery shells being fired from a heavy gunship, probably an AC-220 "Vulture." He couldn't see the aircraft as it would have been circling at about three thousands meters over the town, but he could see the effects it was having. Entire blocks were reduced to rubble as the Vultures and the SkyHawks swept the town from one end to the other with their cannons. Then -

" _Cataphract, this is Hawkeye alpha one six, we are at bingo fuel,"_ Tariq heard the SkyHawk pilots report. _"We are returning to base. Good luck down there. Out."_

And just like that, Tariq could see all UNSC aircraft peeling away, leaving the airspace clear of all friendlies.

"You kidding me!? Fucking Zoomies won't even stay for the entire fight!?" Tariq exclaimed, not sure if he should have been frustrated or outraged.

"Maybe they're needed elsewhere?" Corona suggested but Tariq immediately shot that idea down.

"Bingo fuel means they're running out of gas moron," Tariq snapped. "If they hadn't been fucking around doing god knows what, maybe they could have stayed a bit longer…"

 _"Forget about them Sergeant,"_ Noble barked. _"We should be close enough to start deploying infantry, wouldn't you agree?"_

Tariq glanced at his forward periscopes. They were within a hundred meters away from where the open field ended, and the first row of buildings began. "Yeah, here's a good place to dump the crunchies!"

 _"Driver, halt!"_ Noble immediately ordered. _"All Cataphract-3 vehicles, halt! Dragoons 2-2 and 2-4, push up and begin deploying infantry! All Cataphract-3 gunners, suppressing fire... NOW!"_

Tariq opened up as Corona bought the vehicle to a screeching halt. He fired a quick burst at the most likely spots Covenant anti-tanks teams would be hiding, before going back and starting the process over again. Just outside of the vehicle, he was vaguely aware as two M432 "Armadillo" IFVs(2) began pushing slightly forward of the battle line, their cargo bay ramps slowly hissing open

Tariq's computer abruptly let out a shrill, and an alert flashed across his screen, warning him his coaxial machine gun was rapidly overheating.

"TC, my coax is overheating, I need to change the barrel!"

 _"Okay, I got you covered!"_ Noble replied and Tariq could hear their pintle mounted GPMG starting up.

Hitting 'confirm' on his screen, Tariq glanced at his periscopes as the automated system kicked in. Their infantry support was just beginning to leave the Armadillos. Leading the way out of the Armadillo to their right was Chenko, looking grim. Tariq shook his head. He still couldn't believe Chenko had decided to reclassify from a 19L(3) to an 11M so soon after Draco III. But then again, he supposed everyone handled traumatic events like that differently.

"Back up!" Tariq roared as his status light turned green and he started shooting again.

 _"07, Dragoon 2-2. Last man is out!"_

 _"This is Dragoon 2-4, infantry deployed!"_

 _"Copy that Dragoons. All IFVs fall back into formation! Infantry squads, form up behind your assigned tanks and standby to advance on the town!"_

 _"Roger that 07,"_ Tariq heard Chenko smoothly reply over the radio. _"Moving now."_

Noble waited a couple minutes for the infantrymen to scramble into position. _"Driver, forward! Slow though, don't outrun the infantry. All Cataphract-3 vehicles, advance!"_

With a rumble, all vehicles started crawling forward.

 _ **FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ!**_

Out of nowhere a plasma cannon abruptly opened up on them. Lillian's hull was lit up as plasma fire raked over them. Presumably the Covenant were aiming for the infantrymen behind them, only the tank was in the way.

"Fuck!" Noble yelped as she ducked back into the tank. Tariq could hear plasma hitting against her hatch as she slammed it shut. "Enemy plasma cannon, second floor, left building! Driver, continue forward. Gunner, hit that building!"

"Guns can't elevate that high! We're too close!"

"Dragoon 2-2, take out that gun!"

 _"Roger that! Firing!"_

 _ **BOOMBOOMBOOM!**_

40mm shells decimated the window the plasma cannon was firing from, but Tariq was too distract by the sight of an Elite running out onto the street in front of them.

"Contact front!" Tariq warned before firing a burst.

The machine gun hit the Elite, but not before he was able to throw a plasma grenade in their direction. "GRENADE!"

Corona abruptly gunned the tank, lurching forward and position the vehicle right over the grenade as it landed on the ground. Tariq could feel the slightest of rumbling as the grenade detonated, but he barely noticed as a radioactive green spike struck the window to one of his periscopes with an audible _TONK_ , causing him to involuntarily flinch.

"Foot mobiles behind the corner of the first building, front right!" Corona called out.

"Got them!" Tariq yelled, spotting the two carbine-equipped Skirmishers firing on them. "These idiots do realize just because we deployed infantry, it doesn't change the fact we're still a fucking **tank** , right!?"

"Who the fuck cares Sergeant, just shoot them!" Noble snapped.

Chunks of masonry fell to the ground as Tariq's machine gun fire chewed up the wall, and he was pretty sure he saw one of the Skirmishers grabbing at his eye as they both ducked back. "They fell back around the corner! TC, want me to expend a HEAT to take them out?"

"Negative! 2-2 Alpha, hit that wall I'm lazing with a couple of grenades!"

" _Got it. Frag out!"_

 _BLOOP. BLOOP._

Tariq couldn't actually hear the grenade launchers firing, but he'd been around them long enough his brain automatically filled in the sound effects as he saw two 40mm HEDP grenades fly downrange and smash into the wall, knocking it down. One of the infantry guys started suppressing the corner with his SAW.

"Watch that right flank Gunner! Driver, you see that chain link fence directly in front of us? Knock it down and then slow down to a crawl!"

A simple chain linked fence was all that separated the field from the edge of the town; Corona merely tapped it with the front edge of the tank and knocked an entire section over.

"07 to all Gunners, continued suppressing! Dragoons 2-2 and 2-4 Alphas, move out and start clearing the area in front of us, over!"

" _Copy 07!"_ Tariq heard Chenko immediately reply. _"Alright boys, we're in business! 4th Squad, move up the left flank! 2nd Squad, on me, we'll take the right! Just like how we did it in MOUT(4) training ladies, let's take it nice and smooth. Watch your corners and move it out!"_

Through his screen, Tariq watched as two squad of infantrymen sprint the remaining twenty meters of open ground to the nearest building. They hit the wall and then, after taking a moment to stack up, rounded the corner and began advancing down the street.

"Driver, follow them! Make sure they don't get further than nine to ten meters away! Gunner, as of right now, Sergeant Chenko is your forward observer now! He calls it out, you shoot it! Everyone, keep your eyes peeled, I'm going up top!"

Tariq could hear the commander's hatch opening up behind him, but he refused to allow himself to get distracted as he pressed his eyes against his sight. In front of him, Chenko was just about to kick in the door to the first building, but before he could even touch it, the door was cut to shreds by plasma fire from deep within the building. Chenko hastily jumped out of the line of fire, somehow managing to not get hit as two of his men came running up. Both of them pulled out a frag grenade and then, after nodding at each other, tossed them inside the building.

 _BOOM!_

Chenko tore into the building as soon as the grenades went off and Tariq could see the flash of gunfire.

" _First building cleared, moving!"_

Chenko reemerged from the building, hastily strapping a stolen plasma pistol to his belt for a war trophy, which was something of a habit he had picked up on Draco III and technically against Army regulations, but fuck if Tariq was going to be the one to report him. He and his squad started moving down the street, but word must have gotten out that the UNSC had deployed infantry and were now vulnerable to small arms because Covenant soldiers were starting to emerge from the woodwork.

Two blocks down, an Elite Major abruptly appeared from around the right corner and just started spraying his plasma rifle downrange, forcing Chenko and his guys to dive for cover. Tariq didn't bother waiting for the call, he just immediately returned fire, hitting the Elite a couple of times and causing his shields to light up. But before Tariq could finish him off, another Elite emerged from the opposite corner carrying a fuel rod cannon and fired off a shot.

 _ **PSSHHH!**_

"INCOMING!"

 _ **WHOOSH!**_

The fuel rod cannon streaked towards them, but it had been fired just a bit too low and it hit the ground about two meters in front of them, bouncing off the road and flying right over the tank.

 _RATATATATAT!_

Noble opened up with her machine gun, decimating the civilian car the Elite had been using for cover but both aliens ducked back behind the wall before they could be hit.

" _07, continue suppressing fire! 2nd Platoon, advance bounding overwatch by fireteams! Go go go!"_

In front of him, he could see Chenko and one of his automatic riflemen dropping to one knee and just spraying down the entire street with gunfire as four other guys dodged around them and started running forward towards the next intersection.

 _CRACK!_

A needler ricocheted off one of the rifleman's helmets as he attempted to cross the street, knocking the man to the ground. He quickly scrambled to his feet as another needler shattered against the road right next to him.

" _Contact, up high! 07, do you have a shot?"_

Tariq scanned the area but he couldn't see where the shot had come from. "Negative!"

" _2-2, 2-4, we have eyes on! We're engaging!"_

" _Driver, move up to let 4th Squad use our tank for cover!"_

Corona floored it, putting Lillian right in the middle of the intersection. To his left, Tariq could see two men from 4th Squad prop their weapons on Lillian's front left track and just start spraying the buildings to their right while a third rifleman lifted her DMR and fired a few shots over their heads.

" _Target destroyed, MOVE!"_

" _2-4, 07, building is cleared, we're moving on!"_

" _Copy 2-2, 2-4 is set to clear the next building!"_

" _Let's do it then people! Breaching, breaching!"_

Tariq watched as one of 4th Squad's guys run up to the next building with a shotgun and blast the hinges off. Planting his feet, he then kicked the door in.

 _BOOM!_

The man was blown backwards off his feet as the door unexpectedly exploded!

" _SHIT! MAN DOWN! 07, hit that fucking building!"_

" _Driver, halt! Gunner, squirt that building down!"_

Tariq gritted his teeth as he blasted the building with his coax. In the meantime, he could see the wounded man trying to crawl back towards the tank, one of his legs bent at an odd angle, and a leaving a trail of blood behind him.

" _MAN DOWN! MEDIC!"_

" _What the fuck was that?"_

" _God damn door was booby trapped! We need some sappers up here, ASAP! And bring up one of the 'dillos!"_

" _We know if any Covenant were inside?"_

" _Get one of the tanks to put a HEAT through that fucking wall, just in case!"_

" _Gunner, you copy? Put a HEAT into the fucking building!"_

"Get that guy out of the way otherwise he's going to get hit!" Tariq roared, pointing at the wounded man.

" _2-4, get your man out of there! He's too close: overpressure from the 120 is going to kill him!"_

" _We'll get him! Need you to pop some smoke first!"_

Tariq hit his smoke dispense, launching a smoke canister down the street as two men ran up to retrieve the wounded soldier.

" _We're clear! HIT IT!"_

"TC, button up! All units, ON THE WAY!"

 _ **KABOOM!**_

The wall exploded, sending a wave of debris to go crashing to the ground as Tariq put a HEAT round right into the first floor of the building at point blank range.

" _We need to get our WIA out of here! One of the 'dillos needs to come up and retrieve him!"_

"Dragoon 2-4, move up and retrieve your wounded in action!" Noble barked. "Corona, push up the block some and give Dragoon some room to maneuver! 2-2, we're pushing slightly past you to give Dragoon some room!"

" _Copy!"_

Corona stepped on the accelerator, pushing Lillian up and into the next intersection.

 _CLANG!_

Lillian shook as she was struck in the side by something heavy!

" _07, contact, left flank! Goddamn, we got two fucking Ghosts just fucking sitting there!"_

Tariq swung his turret around, but the left barrel hit the wall of the nearby building, preventing him from bringing his guns to bear. Undeterred, Tariq spun his turret to the right to gain some momentum, and then quickly jabbed his stick to the left, spinning his turret with enough speed his main cannon was able to burst through the brick wall, but by then the Ghost were quickly speeding away.

"Hit those assholes with a canister!" Noble screamed.

"On the way!"

 _ **WHOOMP!**_

Concrete and asphalt shattered as Tariq fired after the retreating Ghost vehicles. One of the Ghost made it away scot-free but the second one was unlucky in that it got hit by a single pellet launched by Tariq's canister shell. Even though it was only hit with one, the Ghost were so lightly armored, that single pellet was enough to rip one of the stabilizers right off the vehicle, causing it to flip and throw the Elite driver to the ground.

The Elite quickly scrambled upright, blindly firing his plasma rifle in their direction as he sprinted for cover in the nearby building. But before he could make it, one of Chenko's men skipped a 40mm grenade of the ground and let it detonate right by the Elite's head. The ensuing explosion not only knocked the Elite back down, the electromagnetic pulse also disabled his shields.

" _Contact, in the open! Shoot that motherfucker!"_

The Elite jerked several times as bullets impacted his armor but he still tried to pick himself off the ground. Tariq could see Chenko run up to a nearby car, prop his rifle against the hood, and fire a few aimed shots.

 _bang bang bang_

The Elite's head jerked to the side as a round punched right through his helmet, splatting his brains all over the road, and he collapsed to the ground.

" _FUCK YOU ASSHOLE!"_ Tariq heard Chenko scream out.

"All units, keep your eyes peeled, we still have at least one Ghost active in this town. 2-2, keep moving, keep moving!"

" _Cataphract 07, this is Dragoon 2-4, we're retrieved our wound. Request permission to fall back?"_

"Granted! Get him out of there!" Noble yelled into her radio. "Gunner, what's our ammo situation looking like?"

Tariq glanced at his screen and swore. "Not good First Sergeant! We're out of HEAT! Shit, when did that happen? I'm down to four canisters, and six beam riders! Also only got about a thousand rounds left for my coax!"

"Damn we're burning through ammo fast. We got to let someone else take the lead. 3-2, this is 07, over."

" _Go ahead 07."_

"3-2, we're running low of ammo. Need you to take over on point."

" _Copy. Moving now."_

"Driver, move us over to the right and let 3-2 overtake us. Dragoon 2-2 Alpha, give us a second, we're rotating tanks around."

" _Copy that, holding!"_

Corona moved the tank over the right, mounting the sidewalk as he did, and Tariq could feel the concrete curb cracking under Lillian's massive weight. He swiveled his sights around to watch 3-2 move up in front of them.

"Head's up Driver, 3-2 is moving past us on our left," Tariq called out.

"I saw them, but thanks!"

"Driver, as soon as 3-2 is in position, continue the advance. Gunner, 3-2 was covering the right side, so check that. I'm going back up!"

The hatch opened once more as Tariq spun his turret to the right to cover that flank as 3-2 maneuvered into position.

" _This is 3-2, we're set. Moving!"_

The entire convoy started advancing again. Tariq glanced forward, but with 3-2's tank now in the way, there wasn't much for him to see. He could still see their infantry support moving up both sides of the road, but there wasn't much he was going to be able to do to help them. He could still hear them though.

" _Benson, put a grenade through that window! You see the one Freddy is shooting at!"_ he heard Chenko saying.

" _Yeah, yeah, I got it!"_

" _Goddamn, those assholes are stubborn. We're still taking fire from that building. Hey, 3-2! Mind putting a shell through that window and give him what for?"_

" _Copy. Gunner, you got it?"_

" _Roger. On the way!"_

Tariq could see 3-2's tank recoiling and a building a couple blocks down came crashing down on the road as it collapsed.

"Wow. Are we trying to save this town or level it?" Corona commented, sounding regretful.

"Yeah, well, welcome to urban warfare 101. It's extremely destructive. Just be glad all the civilians were able to evacuate before this town got it hit by the Covenant cause now we don't have to worry about accidently killing our own people," Tariq snapped.

" _Contact, front!"_

" _Shit, I think it's the same damn Ghost from before! Don't let that asshole get away this time!"_

" _Gunner, standby to fire!"_

Tariq glanced forward to see what was going on, only to look up in time to see a violet-pink beam of light pass right through 3-2's tank commander's chest. The beam cut right through the man's chest plate like it wasn't even there, and the man immediately slumped at his station.

"SNIPER!" Tariq screamed, looking for the source. At the same time, a lot of people began talking at the same time.

" _Oh my god! This is 3-2, our TC is down! Sergeant Frimpong is down!"_

" _That was a fucking beam rifle, anyone see where that came from?"_

" _Sniper! Everyone, get down!"_

" _Fuck. 07, be advised, we have a KIA, Staff Sergeant John Frimpong."_

Tariq ignored the radio calls as he looked around and spotted the clock tower. He thought he had destroyed that thing before entering the town, only apparently he hadn't as it was still standing, abet, its clock face was completely destroyed. It was within that clock tower, Tariq spotted the floating pink dot of light.

"TC, Gunner has eyes on sniper! TC?"

Tariq couldn't see Noble as the upper half of her body was sticking out of the tank, so he spun his exterior periscope around to look at her. She was sitting there, staring at the still body of Sergeant Frimpong, still sitting lifelessly at his station as people scrambled for cover around him. A look of horror, shock, and guilt was plastered all over Noble's face, and it wasn't hard to figure out what she was thinking. Unfortunately, it wasn't helping them now.

"First Sergeant Noble!" Tariq screamed, trying to get her attention. "FIRST SERGEANT NOBLE! _Shit!"_

Grabbing the controls for the RWS, Tariq spun it around. The last thing he wanted to do was fire the heavy machine gun as its muzzle was practically right next to Noble's face, but he needed to kill that sniper before the Jackal could get away, and because 3-2 was in the way, he couldn't rotated his main gun around to do it.

 _BAMBAMBAM!_

"3-2, 07, follow my tracers!" Tariq barked over the radio as he hammered the general area around the Jackal sniper, trying to prevent him from getting away. Outside and in front of him, he could see 3-2's turret slowly rotating around.

" _On the way!"_

 _ **WHOOMP!**_

The clock tower exploded as 3-2's shell hit, but Tariq wanted to make sure the clock tower was actually destroyed this time around.

"3-2, keep firing on that clock tower! 2-2, this is 07, do you have a SRAAW(5) with a thermobaric warhead?"

" _Copy!"_

"Hit that tower! Bring it to the fucking ground!"

" _Contreras, bring up the M76! Hit that fucking tower!"_

Through his sights, Tariq watched as an infantryman run up with a shoulder-fired recoilless rifle.

" _Rocket!"_

A cloud of dust was kicked up as the soldier fired. Tariq followed the rocket as it streaked through the air, and watched as it slam into the tower about halfway up. There was a loud roar as the entire tower finally collapsed.

Movement behind him caused Tariq to glance over his shoulder, and he watched as Noble slump back inside the tank.

"TC, you still with us?" he demanded to know.

"I put him in front," he heard her muttered and he resisted the urge to scream at her. Still, he couldn't help but tersely say:

"Yeah, you fucking did. And you can think about it all night later if you want. But in the meantime, you got to focus. We're in a hostile town surrounded by a fuck ton of bad guys. I got to know: are you still going to keep 3-2 in the front if they're a man down!?"

Maybe it was something in Tariq's tone that got through to her, but Noble quickly shook her head before glancing at him.

"Yeah," she said. "We're almost through the town and we should be linking up with 1st Platoon any moment now. Keep the momentum going."

"First Sergeant? You don't need to tell me that; tell 3-2 that," Tariq drily noted.

Noble blinked in surprise and shot him an annoyed look, but nevertheless grabbed the talk button to her headset.

"3-2, this is 07: I know you got a man down, but you got to keep pushing! We should be linking up with 1st Platoon any moment now, so keep advancing!"

" _Copy that. Um, 07, with our TC KIA, we're down a pair of eyes, so you know we're not going to be able to cover all the angles, right?"_

"I understand that 3-2, but 07 has got your six and we've got infantry support. You're just going to have to make do."

" _Copy. Advancing now. 2-2 Alpha, did you copy all that?"_

" _Yeah, we heard. We're moving onto the next building. Breaching!"_

Tariq could hear gunfire ringing out over the radio as he slowly panned his gun sights around, searching for more snipers, AT teams, and enemy contacts just in general. He could hear Noble going up top again, though he vaguely noted she wasn't sticking her entire body out this time and instead, was trying to keep low, probably to avoid any more sniper fire. It seemed a little unnecessary though as by the sounds of it, the Covenant were finally giving up the fight.

" _Hey, watch yourself! Don't go tearing off after those two Skirmishers, they might be trying to lure us into an ambush!"_

" _3-2, push passed this next corner, see if anything hits you."_

" _Copy, moving now."_

The area lit up with plasma fire.

" _Ha! What'd I tell you? Plasma cannon, top left window! 3-2, take him out!"_

" _Troops in the open! Looks like they're falling back! Don't let them get away!"_

Tariq's motion detector pinged and he glanced at his screen to see a number of friendlies rolling up from the south.

" _Cataphract-3, this 06,"_ the voice of Lightfoot filled Tariq's headset. _"We're rolling up on your right flank. All Cataphract 1 and 3 victors, begin pivoting north and force the Covenant retreat in that direction."_

" _Solid copy 06,"_ Noble replied.

In front of him, Tariq could see 3-2 rounding the corner. At the next intersection, he glanced to his right and a couple blocks away, he could see the tanks of 1st Platoon making their own way through the town, preventing the Covenant from retreating in that direction. Sandwiched between two UNSC armored battle groups, the Covenant only had one direction to go: to a large open field just on the outskirts of the northern part of the town. Unfortunately for the Covenant though, the UNSC was already there waiting for them.

" _Cataphract 1 and 3, hold position. Cataphract 2, troops in the open, all friendlies are clear, you are free to engage, over."_

" _Affirmative! Engaging!"_

On the other side of the field, roughly seven hundred meters away, there was a fairly large creek bed that suddenly lit up with muzzle flashes. Positioned there were the tanks of 2nd Platoon, the company executive officer, as well as a couple of vehicles from Bowman, the company's assigned SPAAG support. Having positioned themselves there before Tariq and the rest of the company had even entered the town, 2nd Platoon had spent the entire battle waiting for this moment.

Machine gun and heavy autocannon fire rippled across the field, smashing into the retreating Covenant. Caught out in the open with only light vehicles for support and with their opponents just outside of the effective range of their weapons, all the Covenant could do was die. Tariq could see Skirmishers and Elites just get cut to shreds by the sheer amount of automatic weapons fire getting thrown their direction. And as if that wasn't enough -

" _Longbow zero three, this is Cataphract Actual. Fire mission: target, Fire Concentration Hotel. Covenant infantry in the open! Twelve rounds, HE airburst, fire for effect!"_

\- artillery began raining down from above. Exploding anywhere between ten to fifteen meters off the ground, the shells rained hot shrapnel down on the heads of the Covenant, leaving them nowhere to hide and no way to survive. As Corona brought the tank up to the edge of the town, Tariq let go of his controls, sat back, and simply watched the slaughter unfold in front of him.

It wasn't long before the last Covenant fell dead to the ground, and a cease fire order was given over the radio. Unfortunately, there was no time to celebrate.

" _Lancer, this is Cataphract: Objective Zebra has been taken, I say again, Objective Zebra has been taken,"_ Tariq heard Lightfoot say over the radio. _"Break; Dragoon 2-3 and 2-4, push out and secure the field. Cataphract 2, come up and secure the left flank. Cataphract 1, Dragoons 2-1, and 2-2, push out to the western edge of town and assume defensive positions. Taipan, set up a company CP at this location."_

A navpoint appeared on Tariq's computer but he didn't pay it any heed because almost immediately after Lightfoot clicked off his radio, Noble came over the channel.

"07 to all platoon commanders, give me a fuel, ammo, and casualty count," he heard her order. He glanced over his shoulder as she came sliding back into the tank. "That means you too guys: ammo and fuel. I got to go talk to the XO on working on getting us a resupply. I'll be back."

Tariq nodded and Noble disappeared out of the hatch. As soon as she left, Tariq let out a groan. Taking off his helmet and headset, he massaged his ears. It didn't seem to matter what he did, after several hours of wearing his headset, his ears always seemed to hurt.

"Jesus," Corona muttered from his spot at the front of the tank. "I thought the air raid was bad but that was intense."

Tariq snorted. "You haven't seen anything yet kid. Just wait until we have to fight against something stronger than a simple reconnaissance unit."

"What!?" Corona twisted around his seat to stare at Tariq with wide eyes. "What do you mean, 'reconnaissance unit.' That was a just a scouting force?"

Tariq stared at him like he was an idiot. "No shit Sherlock. What, did you think we were facing the entire fucking Covenant Army? Why do you think we only saw infantry and light vehicles? What we just destroyed here was only a screen force for the Covenant landing site."

"But they did so much damage…" Corona said rather weakly.

Tariq nodded as, glancing outside through his periscopes, he noticed a couple of medics climbing to the top of 3-2's tank and gently removing Sergeant Frimpong's body from his station. Frimpong's death was a bit painful, as he was one of the veterans from the Draco III campaign. The only solace Tariq could take comfort in was the fact that Frimpong's body was able to be recovered at all, which was more than could be said about some of the people that had been left behind on Draco III. But that was only small comfort at best.

"Yeah, well," Tariq finally said, "now you understand just how tough the Covenant are. If light infantry are capable of doing this much damage, think about how much damage an entire armored division could do."

Corona was silent for a moment. "Well, at least that explains why we got thrown onto the attack so suddenly," he finally commented. "I thought we were going to get resupplied first, but I guess command wants us to hit the Covenant before they can reach full strength."

"'Attack?'" Tariq echoed. "Who's attacking? Cause it's certainly not us. Our job was to capture this town, and we just did that, so now our job is go hull-down and wait for the Covenant to come to us."

"But I thought our orders from Command were…"

"Yeah, I know what our orders are," Tariq interrupted. "But the words of some asshole sitting in a heated room a bazillion klicks away doesn't change the facts on the ground just because he's got a cluster of stars on his shoulder."

"What do you mean?"

"Look Private, let me explain some facts to you: according to the UNSC Army TOE, an armored division like ours is supposed to have a grand total of four maneuver combat brigades, plus an aviation brigade, plus a sustainment brigade. That's six brigades, right? When we got deployed to Draco III, we were at ninety percent allocated strength. By the time we got pulled out, we were down to about thirty. We got sent back here to be rebuilt, but in the three months we've been here, you know how many units are back up to pre-deployment strength?"

Corona shook his head.

"One. Ours. 2nd Brigade. 3rd Brigade and the Aviation Brigade don't even exist at this point whereas both the 53rd Sustainment Brigade and 1st Brigade are only up to fifty percent allocated strength. I don't even know fuck all about 4th Brigade. What's my point again? Oh right. The fact we were the only unit back up to full strength is the reason why we were the only brigade to get partitioned out to go reinforce just about every single military installation in the AO. But because we've been scattered to the four winds, we're no longer in a position to launch a decisive strike anywhere against the Covenant drop zone. So our best bet right now to dig in, hold the Covenant back, and wait for reinforcements. It's that simple."

" _INCOMING!"_

 _ **KABOOOM!**_

Tariq jerked in surprise as a Covenant plasma mortar slammed into the ground nearby and exploded, releasing its deadly payload into the air.

 _ **SWHOOOOOSHHHH! SWHOOOOOSHHHH!**_

Another two mortars came flying in! One slammed into the front of a nearby building, blowing the wall to pieces and throwing debris in all directions.

"Shit, we got more incoming!" Tariq screamed as he looked around and spotted another three mortars hanging in mid-air. "Find some cover!"

Outside, he could see the infantry and other support personnel scrambling around, looking for shelter from the artificial storm. While he and Corona, burrowed deep inside their metal nest, were safe from the barrage unless they were unlucky enough to take a direct hit, the same couldn't be said for everyone else that had been wandering outside. He saw one mortar exploded nearby, throwing a chunk of shrapnel at one of the medics, which thankfully got deflected by the shoulder pauldron the man was wearing. Looking to his right, Tariq spotted Chenko diving head first into one of the Armadillos nearby, the ramp slamming shut behind him, and he let out a sigh of relief: like the Grizzlies, unless the Armadillo took a direct hit, anyone sitting inside would be safe.

Then he spotted Noble running towards them.

"RUN FIRST SERGEANT!" Tariq yelled into his radio. "Driver! Get the First Sergeant!"

Corona immediately shifted the tank into gear and started driving towards Noble. Feeling a weird sense of déjà vu, Tariq nevertheless hauled himself out of his chair, reached up and pushed open the hatch to the turret as Noble climbed onto the tank. Tariq just barely managed to get out of the way as Noble dove headfirst into the vehicle.

"You okay First Sergeant?" he immediately asked her as she shut the hatch behind her.

"I'm good!" she breathlessly replied. "You? Both of you?"

"We're good First Sergeant!" Corona responded.

"Any casualties?"

"Haven't heard anything yet."

" _This is Cataphract Actual! Aerial recon has picked up a large group of Covenant soldiers and vehicles approaching the town from the east! All units, assume defensive positions and standby to defend this town!"_

"Shit, the Covies must have either just landed a troop transport or they're throwing all the vehicles that have made it to the surface so far because this attack is coming far sooner than it should have been!" Tariq yelped.

"Sergeant, 1st and 4th Brigades of the 53rd Armored were supposed to have launched an attack from the north flank of the Covenant drop zone and driven them out of the city of Byzas, and in our direction," Noble noted. "At least that was the plan. Could this be a result of their attack?"

"I doubt 1st and 4th would have been able to get their shit together that quickly First Sergeant," Tariq yelled back. "So I highly doubt their attack has even began! This has just got to be a localized counterattack!"

 _ **SWHOOOOOSHHHH! SWHOOOOOSHHHH! KABOOOM! KABOOOM!**_

Tariq flinched as another two mortars landed nearby, one of which struck less than three meters away from their position. "Man, they really don't want us here!"

"Driver, keep us moving, make us a harder target to hit!" Noble ordered.

"Shouldn't we be going to the frontline to get ready for the counterattack?"

"Dude, we have fuck all for ammunition," Tariq immediately pointed out. "First Sergeant, when the hell is the resupply convoy supposed to reach us?"

"They're on the way, but in the meantime, we need to find an alternative source of ammo! Listen, 3-1's tank is still fucked up; we're going to need the mechanics from our FSC to get their track fixed. In the meantime though, they've still got about half their ammo reserves left. So we got to get out to 3-1, transfer their ammo from their tank to ours, and then head to the frontline and redistribute as necessary."

Tariq stared at her. "You realize, First Sergeant, that means we're going to have to drive out to an open field, _get out of the tank_ , transfer a bunch of heavy ass shells from one vehicle to another, all while doing it in the **middle of a mortar barrage!?** "

"Yes, I realized that Sergeant, but as you so helpfully pointed out, we need the ammo!" Noble snapped. "Driver, get us to 3-1's position!"

"Yes First Sergeant!"

Tariq gritted his teeth, but decided to keep his mouth shut. Unfortunately, he could do the math and realized there was just no other way.

They drove through the town as mortars rained down all around them. Every time a mortar hit the ground, Tariq couldn't help but flinch. Intellectually, he knew that trying to hit them was like trying to hit the bullseye on a dart board, only, the player was standing one room away, wearing a blindfold, and the board was moving. Still, it wasn't impossible, and the Covenant only need to get lucky _**once.**_

Plasma continued to rain down all around them as they headed to where 3-1's tank was still sitting. Even here, completely on the other side of the town where the attack was coming from, the barrage was still rather heavy and Corona had to work hard to avoid driving into some of the craters left behind least he accidentally get them stuck. They headed out to the field they had originally passed through in order to assault the town where 3-1's tank was still sitting there, waiting for repairs. Taipan 1-4 was gone, probably having been ordered to go assist the other engineers in setting up hull-down positions for the rest of the company, while 3-1's crew was nowhere to be seen.

"3-1, 07, you copy?" Noble frantically said into the radio. "What's your twenty?"

 _"We're inside our tank,"_ came the reply. _"What's up?"_

"3-1, we're headed to your location now. We need to strip out all of the ammunition from your tank and put it in ours!"

 _"Copy!"_

"We're going to make a chain. Sergeant, you and I will be outside. We'll hand the shells to Private Corona who will be inside loading the rounds onto the racks. Got it?"

"Got it," Tariq barked, unbuckling his harness at the same time. He took a deep breath, mentally preparing himself as Corona began backing Lillian right up to 3-1's tank so that both tanks were back to back, making transfer just a bit easier.

 _Clang_.

There was a slight rumble as both tanks hit each other.

"GO!" Noble yelled and then disappeared out of the hatch. Tariq quickly followed her.

Outside, the noise of the plasma mortars streaking through the air and exploding nearby caught Tariq completely off guard; he always forgot how muffled things could get while inside a tank. The noise did make him very much aware of just how vulnerable he was outside of his tank, wearing not much more than his level IIIA soft armor and fire-resistant coveralls, and he resolved to work as fast as he could.

As they leaped over to 3-1's tank, the hatch opened and 3-1's commander, Lieutenant Romero, came climbing out with a HEAT shell in his hands.

"Here, take this!" he yelled, handing it over to Noble, who immediately transferred it over to Tariq. Tariq in turn stuffed it through their hatch and down to Corona, who grabbed it.

"Come on, hurry up!" he screamed.

"INCOMING!"

A plasma mortar came screaming in, causing everyone to duck. The mortar exploded a few meters away, showering them all with dirt and melting snow.

"Come on, keeping going!" Noble urged, handing Tariq another shell.

As he dumped the shell into the hatch, Tariq could hear fighting beginning to ring out in the distance.

 _"Covenant are dropping smoke to cover their advance!"_ Lightfoot was saying over the radio. _"All personnel, keep your heads on a swivel and watch for infiltrators!"_

 _"HUNTERS! All call signs, we have Hunters on the field!"_

 _"Covenant are pushing up Hunters!"_

 _"Cataphract Actual, this is Taipan 1-3, I have eyes on multiple Shadow APCs advancing alongside the Hunters!"_

 _"Cataphract 1 and 2! Target the Hunters! Cataphract 3 and all Cataphract support vehicles, target the Shadows before their infantry can dismount! All units, standby to fire on my mark!"_

 _"Any chance of a resupply?"_

"This is 07, I'm working on it!" Noble yelled into her radio. "07 to 3-3, is your main cannon working?"

 _"Uh, we're not sure yet and we're not exactly willing to test it out to be honest, over."_

"Strip out your main cannon ammo and redistribute it among 2nd Platoon! We'll do the same with 1st Platoon!"

 _"All units, OPEN FIRE!"_

The roar of heavy cannon fire on the other side of town caused Tariq's head to snap up, and almost missed catching the belt of machine gun ammo Noble tossed at him.

"Sergeant, pay attention!" she snapped. "This should be the last of it! Lieutenant Romero, 3-2 needs a new TC! Recommend you take over sir! As for your crew, I could use their help with the ammo redistribution!"

"Okay, sounds good to me First Sergeant!" Romero yelled back. "Alright, my guys, get your shit and come with me!"

"Get back to your station Sergeant and help Corona finish stowing those rounds. And make some room: it's going to get tight in there!"

"Roger that First Sergeant!

Tariq hastily slid back into the tank, thankful to be back inside his cocoon of steel. Shoving Corona back into the driver's seat, Tariq grabbed the last couple of loose shells and shoved them into their racks before tossing himself back into his own seat.

Noble came diving back into the tank, followed closely by the crew of 3-1. Tariq made room for them as best as he could. Most tanks weren't design to carry more than three crewmembers at any given time on the inside of the tank, and Lillian was no exception. Unfortunately with mortar rounds still dropping down in the field and town that surrounded them, this was the only way to ensure everyone made it safely.

"Move it out Corona! And try to avoid hitting any speed bumps!" Noble ordered, wedged somewhat awkwardly between Romeo and 3-1's gunner.

"I'll do my best!" Corona promised, throwing the tank into gear.

"Lieutenant, did you rip out the radio and blue force tracer from your tank just in case we lose control of this town?" Tariq asked over his shoulder.

"Yeah, I got them right here!"

"3-2, this is 07, come in!" Noble called into her radio as Romero lifted the devices in question.

 _"Go ahead!"_

"3-2, we're headed towards your location: 3-1 Actual is going to take over as your replacement TC! We need you to ping your location so we know where to go!"

 _"Copy that 07, pinging now!"_

A navpoint appeared on Tariq's screen.

"Driver get us to that location!" Noble barked. "And try to avoid traveling in sight of the enemy; with this many people inside the turret, we're not going to be able to shoot the main gun or traverse the turret!"

"Understood!"

Tariq gritted his teeth as the headed towards the edge of the town. Now that they were getting closer to the fighting, not only could he see plasma mortars still falling from the sky, but now fuel rod cannons were also getting added to the mix as the Covenant Hunters fired back at the UNSC tanks.

He suddenly spotted 3-2's tank down the block ahead of them. 3-2, along with 3-3, were hanging back a few blocks from the frontlines, probably in a reserve position as neither of the tanks were firing. Both vehicles were set up inside a couple of buildings, the tanks having driven through the outer walls and parked themselves on the ground floors in order to seek shelter from the incoming plasma.

"Sir, are you ready!?" Noble asked as they got closer.

Tariq could feel Romero nodding his head behind him.

"Standby! Driver, halt! Lieutenant, GO GO GO!"

Romero scrambled out of the hatch and through his periscopes, Tariq could see Romero tumbling off the tank and onto the ground. A fuel rod cannon exploded nearby and Tariq winced as Lillian was pelted by all sorts of shrapnel, but Romero nevertheless climbed to his feet, completely unscathed. They watched as he sprinted over to 3-2, climb on top, and throw himself inside.

 _"3-1 Actual is secured!"_ he announced over the radio, and Tariq let out a mute sigh of relief.

"Copy that 3-1, break. 07 to 1-1 Actual, we're inbound with a small resupply. What do you need?"

 _"07, go to 1-3 first! He's got the least amount of ammo! I'm pinging his location!"_

Another navpoint appeared on Tariq's screen and without waiting for an order, Corona immediately turned and headed towards it.

"1-3, 07. What do you need?"

 _"I need everything 07! But mostly HEAT and canister!"_

Tariq could see Noble silently counting. "I can give you six of each. But no more!"

 _"That'll work!"_

Noble glanced at the remainder of 3-1's crew. "Okay, you two, plus Sergeant Helmand, and I will transfer the shells over. Private Corona! Stay in the tank and keep it running. Get ready!"

Tariq watched through his periscopes as they approached 1-3's position. Unlike the other tanks, 1-3 had positioned himself in some sort of construction sight, taking cover behind a bulldozer. Just beyond the dozer, Tariq could see the open field and the Covenant forces that were advancing across it. There was a long line of Hunters approaching them, all of whom were firing their weapons, with the Shadows hanging back just slightly behind them. By the looks of it, the Covenant were using Hunters in lieu of actual tanks, and he was suddenly struck with the realization that this must have been what it looked like to the Covenant forces defending the town when Tariq's company was making their approach.

"Get ready!" Noble yelled as Corona brought as close to 1-3 as he could without exposing himself to Covenant fire. "Go go go!"

Tariq grabbed a shell and impatiently waited for everyone else to exit the tank before scrambling out after them. Unfortunately, 1-3 was just a bit too far away to form a human chain so Tariq quickly grabbed another shell, tossed himself off the tank, and began sprinting towards 1-3.

 _ **BOOOOSSSHHHH! BOOOOSSSHHH!**_

A fuel rod cannon from one of the Hunters slammed into the cab of the bulldozer, blowing it up. Swinging their turret around, 1-3 quickly retaliated.

 _ **WHOOMP!**_

1-3 fired both barrels, causing Tariq to stumble as the muzzle blast picked up all sorts of mud, ice, and rocks and threw them all over the place. It was worth it though because downrange, Tariq could see a Hunter take both shells straight to the chest, causing the creature to simply explode, coating the ground with bright orange goo. The Hunter's partner took one look at the remains of his friend and let out a roar that audible even across the field.

"Come on! I need more shells!" 1-3's commander screamed and Tariq hurriedly handed the round he had over as the Hunter started charging towards their position in a mad frenzy. But before the Hunter could take more than a couple of steps, a 155mm artillery shell landed right in front of the creature and exploded, knocking it over.

"Lightfoot just called in an artillery strike!" Noble screamed as more shells dropped out of the sky. "That's going to slow the Covenant down, but we still got to get to 1-1's position! Hurry it up people!"

Tariq tossed his last shell into 1-3's tank before leaping straight off the tank and collapsing into a roll as he hit the ground. One of the crewmembers from 3-1 tried to do the same thing, only he didn't bother collapsing his legs as he hit the ground, causing an audible crack to fill the air. The man let out a scream of pain as he immediately bent over, gripping his ankle.

"Come on, get up dude!" Tariq urged, running over and grabbing the man by the back of his vest, hauling him to his feet.

 _CRACK!_

The man immediately collapsed again, a pink needle growing out from between his eyes.

"Infantry in the open!" Tariq screamed, looking out towards the field and seeing a bunch of Covenant infantry beginning to pour out from one of the Shadows. Tariq lifted his SMG and fired an extended burst in their direction, even though at the distance they were at, it was unlikely he would be able to hit a single one of them.

"Sergeant, come on!" Noble roared from the top of Lillian and, shooting one last look at the dead man beside him, Tariq sprinted back towards the tank and dove inside.

" _Cataphract, this is Hawkeye alpha one six,"_ Tariq heard someone say over the radio as he strapped himself back into his station. _"We are en route to your location, ETA, three minutes."_

" _Hawkeye, this is Cataphract Actual! When you come in, come in from the south! We got enemy advancing east of our position at one five zero! I need immediately air strikes on their position! Might need an Arc Light! Do we have any Shortswords available in the area, over!?"_

"1-1, we're headed to you now," Noble suddenly interjected, cutting through all the chatter on the radio. "Ping your location, out!"

A new navpoint appeared on Tariq's screen and Noble dropped her radio.

"Driver, get us there, now!"

Tariq could feel the tracks grinding against the ground as Corona jammed down on the accelerator, before they were able to obtain some traction and the tank abruptly took off. Speeding towards the new navpoint, Tariq started to prepare himself, grabbing a canister shell from the racks and cradling it in his arms like it was a baby.

"1-1, we're at your location!" Noble grabbed a couple of boxes of machine gun ammo. "Come on guys! Let's go!"

She scrambled out of the tank with Tariq following close behind. Climbing to the top of Lillian, he threw himself off the side, and landed right on top of Noble, knocking her to the ground and causing her to accidently drop the ammo cans. Upon hitting the ground, the cans immediately burst open, spilling bullets all over the place.

"Shit! Sorry!" Tariq yelped as he dropped to his hands and knees to try and help Noble clean up, but she roughly grabbed him by the arm and shoved him away.

"I got this! You go!" she demanded and Tariq nodded, taking off in the direction of 1-1.

Like the tanks from 3rd Platoon had done, 1-1 was parked inside a nearby building for cover. As he ran towards them, Tariq could see the remaining crewmember from 3-1 on top of the tank, handing a shell over to 1-1's tank commander.

 _ **BOOOOSSSHHHH! BOOOM!**_

Unexpectedly, Tariq found himself flying backwards through the air!

He hit the ground with enough force to knock all the breath out of him, and he rolled over to the side, gasping for air as a ringing noise filled his ears. A shadow of a figure fell over him, and Tariq reflexively lifted his SMG in response, but it was only Noble.

'Get up!' he saw her mouth, and he tried, but his legs were shaking too much.

"GET UP SOLDIER!" Noble screamed into his ear as the ringing started to fade away, and he felt her grab him by the shoulders and haul him to his feet. Half walking, half limping, Tariq allowed Noble to drag him back into the direction of their tank. Still trying to figure out what the hell had just happened, he glanced over his shoulder, only to see 1-1's tank was now a giant flame wreck.

"06, this is 07, 1-1 is down, I say again, 1-1 is down!" Noble was screaming into her radio. "Come on Sergeant, get back in the tank!"

"What the hell just happened!?"

"They took a direct hit from a fuel rod! Must have set off the loose shells they had inside the turret or something because that tank went up like a tactical nuke!"

Tariq grunted as he struggled to make his way back to Lillian. Ahead of him, he saw Corona poking his head out from the driver's hatch.

"Come on guys!" Corona screamed. "We got an air strike coming in! Shortswords are about to carpet bomb the entire field in front of us! Get to cover, get to cover!"

Tariq swore as he heard the steady roar of an incoming jet bomber growing louder and louder by the second, increasing in pitch as it began drowning out all other sounds. Somewhat awkwardly, Tariq managed to climb aboard the tank, get in through the hatch, and slam it shut behind him in time to hear:

" _Cataphract, Snapdog. Bombs away, bombs away, bombs away."_

 _ **BABOOMBABOOMBABOOMBABOOM!**_

The entire field in front of them lit up as nearly thirty Mark 209 bombs were simultaneously dropped right on the heads of the advancing Covenant! Tariq could just barely catch glimpses of entire Covenant squads getting consumed by the fireballs before they disappeared behind the massive upheaval of dirt and earth. The entire colony seemed to shake as the shockwave tore through the surface and Tariq could hear the _clang_ as shrapnel struck Lillian's armor at near supersonic speeds.

And then suddenly, it was all over, leaving nothing behind but a smoking pile of ruin that used to be an entire Covenant attack force.

"Okay, I take back what I said," Tariq commented in the eerie silence that followed. "Fucking Chair Force can do whatever the fuck they want, as long as they keep doing shit like that."

"Enjoy it while it last Sergeant. They were only able to pull that off because we still have local air superiority. If we lose that…" Noble trailed off.

Tariq nodded in understanding, and for a moment, all three of them just sat there, trying to catch their breath.

"What the hell is that?" Corona suddenly asked, breaking the silence. Tariq glanced at him.

"What the hell is what?"

"That, in the distance. On the horizon."

Tariq sat up and looked in the direction Corona was pointing. In the very, very far distance, he could just barely make out what seemed like a purple beam of light going pointing straight up into the air. Curious, Tariq grabbed the controls to his optics and swiveled them around, maxing out the zoom. The purple beam seemed to start from the ground and go straight up, into the sky, and disappear into the lower atmosphere. For a brief second, there was a flash, and Tariq thought he saw something solid traveling straight down through the beam.

A cold chill went down his spine as Tariq abruptly realized what he was seeing.

"That?" he breathlessly replied.

"That's a gravity lift."

 **XXXXX**

 **UNSC** _ **Kilkis**_ **  
High Orbit, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
**

 **Spaatz**

Spaatz fold his arms over his chest as he regard the image that was currently occupying the tactical display in front of him. It wasn't the cleanest of images, being a screen grab from an Army unit, which had captured the image from very far away, by an optic that wasn't necessarily designed for this sort of thing. Despite this, there was no mistaking what the image was of.

"The Covenant… have begun to set up a gravity lift on their drop zone, sir," Kanin informed him. "I estimate by the time the gravity lift is completed, the Covenant will be able to transport an entire battalion-sized unit to the surface within a few seconds, complete with armor, artillery, and air support."

Spaatz nodded. "Which vessel is this gravity lift tied to?" he asked.

"As of this current moment sir? The _ORS-_ class heavy cruiser. Although theoretically, any Covenant warship is capable of connecting, sir."

Spaatz grunted in acknowledge before dismissing the image with a simple wave of his hand. He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Well, technically, this is exactly what we wanted," he admitted as he turned around to face the holographic images of his three intelligence chiefs.

" _It is, sir,"_ Harper replied. _"By taking the time to establish a gravity lift, the Covenant have revealed their hand: they are fully committing to this landing site. As we had hoped."_

"Yes," Spaatz allowed. "It is going exactly as we had planned." And it really was. Everything was seemingly going according to plan. Yet for some reason, seeing that image of the gravity lift, Spaatz was suddenly struck by the feeling that, somehow, he had just made a terrible mistake. But he couldn't tell what it was. And that was making him nervous.

He resisted the urge to fidget. The problem was, things had been set in motion that, once started, couldn't be stopped. The only thing Spaatz could do now was see this entire sequence through to the end.

And hope.

Hope that when the other shoe finally dropped, things wouldn't end in a complete disaster.

Taking a moment to mental prepare himself, Spaatz turned to Kanin, who was standing beside him patiently waiting for orders.

"Well," he began. "The Covenant have finally committed, and now I think it's time we did the same. Kanin? Assemble the fleet. Whatever ships we can spare."

"It's time Task Force Whiskey joined the fight."

* * *

1\. Engies: Engies is just short for "engineers"

2\. The M432 "Armadillo" IFV is not a canon vehicle, but one of my own creation. It appeared in my other story, _Missing in Action._ There was a brief mention of the vehicle in chapter 3, but it didn't play a large part until chapter 13 where it was the vehicle Moss and his squad used to retreat to their Pelican extract.

As per my description of the vehicle from that story, the Armadillo is similar in appearance to the Scorpion MBT in that is has the same four-bogey tread configuration as all UNSC tanks do, its armed with a M8545 40mm autocannon (not a canon designation,) an M247 coaxial machine gun, a M247 GPMG commander's machine gun, a dual-barrel Argent V missile launcher on the side of the turret, smoke dispensers, crewed by at least three men, and is capable of carrying a seven man infantry squad.

The name is derived from the real-world Swedish designed "Armadillo" armored vehicle that was never adopted by any army, though technically that vehicle is an APC, not an IFV like the UNSC one is intended to be.

3\. 19L or 19 Lima is not a real US Army MOS code (at least as far as I can tell.)

As per Wikipedia, for the US Army Armor Branch, there are currently six MOS codes in usage today. The one for being an enlisted tank crewmember (whether it be a driver, gunner, loader, or tank commander) would be 19K. However, that MOS code is specifically reserved for the M1 Abrams series of vehicles. As the Abrams is the only tank in current usage by the modern day US Army, it is the only code available. However historically, other tanks have had their own codes. For example, 19 **E** referred to crewmembers of the M48 Patton tanks, 19 **G** for crewmembers of the M551 Sheridan, and 19 **J** for members of the M60 Patton. (Information obtained from this website: www. mosdb. com

In light of that, I decided to devise two codes of my own: 19 **L** (19 Lima) for crewmembers of the M850 Grizzly, and 19 **M** (19 Mike) for crewmembers of the M808 Scorpion.

4\. MOUT: **M** ilitary **O** perations in **U** rban **T** errain. A US military term for urban warfare, according to Wikipedia, the acronym has mostly been replaced by the term **UO** , or simply, **U** rban **O** perations.

5\. M76 **S** hort **R** ange **A** nti- **A** rmor **W** eapon (or SRAAW): like the Armadillo, this is not a canon weapon, but one of my own creation. It first appeared in chapter 5 of _Missing in Action_ , though it doesn't get used until chapter 6, most notably when Moss uses it against a Covenant Hunter.

From my author's notes for that chapter, the M76 is a single shot, disposable recoilless rifle that fires a 110mm hollow charged warhead, though as shown in this chapter, variants with other warheads are available. Based on the appearance and role of the modern-day Panzerfaust 3 anti-tank weapon, the weapon with warhead weighs a total of 12.9kg (or 28.43lbs) with a maximum effective range of about three hundred meters. The weapon has a saltwater countermass in the rear of the launcher, meaning there is no backblast making it safe to use in enclosed areas.

In my original notes, I said it was only issued out to the UNSC Army's light infantry units, like the Airborne, but I've changed my mind and I'm just going to say it's a general issued weapon to all UNSC Army combat units.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

 **UNSC** _ **Kilkis**_ **, High Orbit, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
1023**

 **Spaatz**

The boxy form of the UNSC _Kilkis_ soared through the void as her massive fusion engines propelled her in the direction of the Covenant. Surrounded by the rest of the ships of Task Force Whiskey, to an outsider, the _Kilkis_ would appear only to be just another ship floating serenely in a sea of gray hulls but on the inside, she was abuzz with activity.

"Kanin: all battle groups, report in," Spaatz barked over the sound of the CIC crew going about their duties.

"Yes sir. Command to all call signs: all battle groups, report in."

 _"This is Gold Group, standing by."_

 _"Blue Group, standing by."_

 _"Red Group, standing by."_

 _"Gray Group: we're green across the board!"_

All across Spaatz's tactical display, green lights began to light up, indicating the forces of Task Force Whiskey were ready for battle. Spaatz could sense Kanin turning in his direction.

"Sir? All battle groups are primed and ready."

"Understood. Time to contact?"

"Five minutes sir."

"Any movement from the Covenant?"

"No sir. But I doubt they don't see us coming."

"Of course," Spaatz muttered under his breath. "Task force this size, the only way the Covenant would miss our approach was if they were blind, deaf, and dumb."

Kanin didn't respond even though Spaatz knew he would have heard him, and Spaatz resisted the urge to sigh, doing his best to maintain the image of a calm and collected commander who had total control of the entire situation. Unfortunately, that couldn't be further from the truth.

Since the beginning of the battle, Task Force Whiskey had been steadily growing in size with the influx of reinforcements to the system. At this point, Task Force Whiskey consisted of two _Marathon_ -class cruisers, three _Epoch_ -class heavy carriers, one _Valiant_ -class super-heavy cruiser, **seven** _Vindication_ -class battleships, dozens of support corvettes, frigates, and destroyers, three Air Force _Trenchard_ -class aircraft carriers, hundreds of gunships and fighters, as well as several dozen orbital platforms and blue-water naval assets from the Actium Navy. It was one of the largest and most powerful fleets Spaatz had ever commanded in his entire military career. He had, at his fingertips, enough firepower to take a page out of the Covenant's book and systematically extinguish all life on Actium with a single volley if he had been so inclined.

However, as terrifying as that statement may have sounded, Spaatz had reason to believe that it wasn't going to be enough.

"Sir, the Covenant are beginning to react to our approach."

Spaatz nodded as, on his screen, a wave of red dots broke away from the main Covenant formation and began speeding towards them. Zooming in, Spaatz could see the wave was mostly comprised of the one-man fighters and gunboats, with the occasional light cruiser mixed in for support, all of which consisted of the Covenant's outer layer of defenses.

"All battle groups, maintain course," Spaatz ordered.

The problem was, and it was a problem that had continually plagued the UNSC since the start of this war, was that Covenant warships simply outclassed their UNSC counterparts in every single way. Covenant ships were stronger and more heavily armored than any UNSC ship in service. The only chance the UNSC ever had for winning was by achieving local superiority in numbers, as well as utilizing better tactics. With TF Whiskey, Spaatz had the numbers, but the tactics may be harder to come by.

Spaatz's strategic objective was fairly straightforward: in order to cripple the Covenant invasion fleet, he estimated he needed to disable, if not outright destroy, at least half the Covenant's capital ships. He had chosen this exact moment to launch his attack because with the Covenant's battlecruisers and _ORS_ heavy cruiser holding station over their landing site, depositing ground troops onto the surface of Actium at a frantic pace, they were at their most vulnerable. Unfortunately, from the way the Covenant fleet had been deployed, it was clear the commander of the Covenant invasion fleet also realized that.

From the moment those capital ships had taken to the field, every other Covenant ship already in the system had immediately broken contact and fallen back to form a defensive "bubble" around the cruisers. There were three primary defensives layers, with the battlecruisers themselves occupying the innermost layer, all the Covenant destroyers occupying the middle layer, and finally all the corvettes occupying the outermost layer, with every single fighter, gunboat, and most of their light cruisers establishing a fighter screen.

In short, in order for Spaatz to even get within firing range of the Covenant capital ships, he would need to fight his way through every single Covenant ship already in the system.

It was a daunting task, one that seemed almost impossible. Still, Spaatz had to try. The fate of billions depended on it.

Fortunately, Spaatz had a plan

"Three minutes until the lead units reach maximum effective range of their weapons sir," Kanin reported.

Spaatz nodded. "Gold Group, standby to engage," he commanded and he could hear Kanin repeating the order over the radio.

On screen, Spaatz watched as the fighters of Gold Group began to pour out of their carriers like a swarm of angry bees whose hive had just been kicked. Gold Group, consisting of three Air Force _Trenchard_ -class aircraft carriers (UNSCs _Iqbal_ , _Bong_ , and _Löwenhardt_ (1),) and reinforced by two Navy cruiser strike groups (based around the UNSCs _Leviathan_ and _Hannibal_ ,) constituted the lightest of Spaatz's battle groups in terms of raw firepower and as such, was currently serving as Spaatz's vanguard and main skirmishing line. Their mission objective was simple: disrupt the Covenant battle formation so heavier units could exploit the chaos.

"One minute until contact sir," Kanin announced.

Waving his hand in acknowledgement, Spaatz reached out and activated his radio.

"Admiral Spaatz to General Carter," he said.

 _"Go for Carter,"_ came the immediate response.

"General Carter: commence Operation: MONSOON RAIN."

 _"Understood sir. General Carter to all Gold Group call signs: commence the attack!"_

Through his display, Spaatz watched as the hundreds of fighters assigned to Gold Group break away from the rest of the task force, followed closely by their assigned naval support ships, which in turn were followed by the Air Force aircraft carriers. The massive group started to head straight towards the Covenant at flank speed, with their fighters quickly pulling ahead of their capital ships.

The two masses of fighters rushed at each other, quickly closing the distance and getting closer to firing range by the second. But whereas the Covenant were beginning to visibly slow down to attack speed, the UNSC fighters were, if anything, speeding up.

Spaatz leaned in closer to his screen. At the speeds those fighters were traveling, obtaining a firing solution on the Covenant even with missiles would prove to be extremely difficult, which made Spaatz wonder how Gold Group planned to work around that. The problem was, while it was Spaatz's job to set the strategic objectives for Gold Group, the "what" of the battle, it was up to the individual commanders to determine the tactics necessary to achieve those objectives, or in other words, the "how" of the battle. Because of that, Spaatz had no idea what the commander of Gold Group was planning.

"Thirty seconds to contact."

Abruptly the Covenant fighters all open fired! A virtual wave of plasma headed straight for the UNSC fighters!

As expected, the fighters waited until the last possible second to start deploying countermeasures but strangely enough, they failed to break formation to begin evasive maneuvers, and Spaatz couldn't help but wince as a number of dots suddenly blinked out of existence from his screen. What were they doing?

"Covenant is now in range!" Kanin announced and Spaatz braced himself, but instead of firing, the UNSC fighters instead just kept flying straight in.

"Are they... trying to close in to dogfighting range?" Spaatz asked out loud and out of the corner of his eye, he could see Kanin shaking his head.

"I have no idea sir. But the Covenant certainly seem to think so," Kanin pointed out and indeed, even as they continued to fire, the Covenant were hastily pairing off in a standard dogfighting formation.

The UNSC fighters got to within knife fighting range of the Covenant, but then, in a move that took everyone by surprise, sped right passed them.

"What the..."

Spaatz watched as every single one of the UNSC fighters slip right past the Covenant. Some of the Covenant started to turn around to pursue, but with most of Gold Group's navy support warships closing in, most of the Covenant opted to try and take advantage of a lack of fighter screen and attack those ships directly. Spaatz could see explosions lighting up the hulls of his warships as the Covenant began their attack.

"Why is Gold Group throwing away their fighter support and letting the enemy attack their capital ships directly? That goes against just about every military manual in existence," Spaatz started to note, but then paused as he noticed the warships weren't even fighting back. Instead, like the fighters before them, they were doing their best to punch right through the Covenant lines, even if it was costing them dozens of casualties by allowing the Covenant free hits.

Confused, Spaatz zoomed his screen out to see where his ships were going, only to see them heading straight for the Covenant's second line of defense, the _SDV_ -class heavy corvettes and the location where most of the Covenant fighters had deployed from.

Covenant corvettes were some of the most versatile ships the Covenant had in their arsenal, being equipped for both anti-ship warfare and anti-fighter warfare. What they were not equipped to do was engage both at the same time, which is why they often deployed with fighter support of their own. With UNSC forces having completely blown past their fighter screen, and confronted with both fighters and warships advancing on their position, the corvettes hesitated, unable to decide who to engage first.

For that mistake, the Covenant paid dearly. Gold Group's warships promptly opened fire at maximum range, unloading several volleys of MAC rounds and Archer missiles at every single corvette present. At the same time, their fighters finally broke off into separate flights and began launching attack runs on the damaged corvettes. The area lit up with plasma fire as the corvettes returned fire but for some of them it was already too late: at least one corvette had already been destroyed while another two were clearly floundering.

In the meantime, realizing the danger, every Covenant fighter started turning around to return to their motherships. But before they could get far, explosions began lighting up the void as anti-aircraft fire began sweeping through their ranks. Advancing on their positions were Gold Group's three Air Force carriers and their gunship escorts. Without hesitating, they plunged among the ranks of the Covenant fighters, taking advantage of their confusion and causing the entire formation to immediately dissolve into chaos.

Watching the scene unfold in front of him, Spaatz couldn't help but be impressed by the boldness of Gold Group's commander. Placing aircraft carriers right in the thick of all the fighting was the opposite of what most commanders would have done. Despite their size, carriers simply lacked the armor or the firepower of most conventional flagships, such as battleships and cruisers. Because of that, most commanders, both Air Force and Navy ones, tried to keep their carriers far from the fighting, preferring to use them in their intended role as mere transports for other vessels. Hell, that's what Spaatz would have done.

But here, it was clear Gold Group's commander intended to use them more like large gunships, tying down the Covenant fighters while allowing the rest of his forces to attack the Covenant warships with impunity. It was a bold and risky strategy on the Gold Group commander's part as the Covenant fighters could easily overwhelm his carriers' defenses, but from the looks of it, it was working: the entire outer layer of the Covenant's defenses were being thrown into chaos as the Covenant scrambled to redeploy their forces in response to the situation at hand.

"Who's the commander in charge of Gold Group?" Spaatz asked Kanin without looking away from his screen. "This... General Carter?"

"Brigadier General Samantha Carter sir," Kanin informed him. "Commissioned twenty six years ago from the service academy, she was initially commissioned as a fighter pilot, though after obtaining a doctorate in astrophysics, she was transferred to **CLASSIFIED** program in 2532. The next ten years of her service record is classified sir. Her record picks up again in 2542, when she was promoted to the rank of Colonel and transferred to the UNSC _Richard Bong_ to serve as her commanding officer. Six months ago she was promoted to Brigadier General and appointed commanding officer of the Air Force's 19th Air Division(2)."

Spaatz nodded his head. He briefly wondered what this "classified" program she had worked on for most of her military career was. In this day and age, it was probably something to do with the Covenant, though Spaatz had heard rumblings that the Air Force was taking the lead on research about another alien species, one that supposedly predated the Covenant. Spaatz never gave the rumors much heed though; he preferred to fight his alien invaders one at a time, thank you very much.

Whatever the case was, it was had clearly taught her how to think unconventionally, something Spaatz felt was desperately needed in this war.

"Send a copy of Carter's CSV to my records," Spaatz commanded. "The ones I have access too, of course. And make an annotation; I'm curious to see where General Carter's career takes her."

"Yes sir."

With that done, Spaatz turned his attention back to the battle at hand. Gold Group was starting to take a fair amount of casualties as the Covenant started getting their fleet reorganized, however the damage was already done: the Covenant's defensive line had been considerably weakened. It was time to drive the nail in.

"Kanin, signal Blue Group," Spaatz instructed. "Inform Admiral Ozzel he may begin Phase II with my compliments."

"Yes sir. Signaling now... Blue Group has received and is beginning their attack now sir."

Outside, about half of the ships that remained of TF Whiskey began to break away from the main force. Consisting of one _Vindication_ -class battlecruiser (UNSC _Phoenix_ ,) one _Valiant_ -class super-heavy cruiser (UNSC _Prometheus_ ,) and three _Epoch_ -class navy heavy carriers (UNSCs _Liaoning_ , _Illustrious_ , and _São Paulo_ ,) as well as all their escorts, Blue Group was a blend of mobility and firepower, with the scales leaning more towards the firepower end. They were going to need that firepower as their goal was a bit more complicated: while Gold Group's job had simply been to disrupt the Covenant's formation, it was Blue Group's job to actually penetrate their defenses.

Spaatz watched as Blue Group's ships soared over Actium's crest and began speeding in the direction of the Covenant. Their formation was a bit more of a conventional layout, but still effective, with the _Prometheus_ and the _Phoenix_ in the van and the carriers following up the rear. Despite her heavier armor, Spaatz did notice Admiral Ozzel had the _Phoenix_ hanging just a bit further back than the _Prometheus_ , which he could understand why: the _Phoenix_ was one of the Navy's newest battleships, having literally been diverted to the Ambracian System while she had been in the middle of her shakedown cruise. In contrast, the _Prometheus_ was one of the oldest, having been the third _Valiant_ -class super-heavy cruiser to have ever been built. As such, Spaatz could imagine Ozzel was somewhat reluctant to allow the _Phoenix_ to get damaged.

Blue Group quickly approached the area where Gold Group and the Covenant's outer layer of defenses were entangled in a mortal struggle of life and death. Coming up from below to avoid collision with the ships from Gold Group, they headed straight for the Covenant's secondary line of defense. A single heavy corvette broke away from the fighting to try and intercept them, but before the ship could reach, both the _Prometheus_ and _Phoenix_ opened up.

The corvette's shields were instantly disabled as six MAC rounds slammed into it in rapid succession, the _Prometheus_ and the _Phoenix_ both being armed with three MACs apiece. The corvette retaliated by launching three plasma torpedoes straight at the _Phoenix_ and started to fire her plasma cannons, but before they could get off more than a single burst, a volley of Ares missiles fired by the _Prometheus_ slammed into the plasma cannons, destroying them instantly and drawing the attention of the corvette. Both ships began exchanging fire at a frantic pace, but the amount of weapons the _Prometheus_ carried, coupled with fire support from her escort frigates, meant it was an exchange the corvette had no chance of winning.

In the meantime, the three plasma torpedoes headed straight for the _Phoenix_ at high speeds. Firing a series of missile directly in their path, the _Phoenix_ was able to destroy one of the torpedoes. The second was diverted by a number of decoys the _Phoenix_ fired, however the third and last torpedo continued along its path, undeterred. The projectile slammed into the battleship's dorsal forward bow section, leaving scorch marks and melted armor in its wake, but failing to do much more than that. That was the major feature that separate a battleship like the _Phoenix_ from a super-heavy cruiser like the _Prometheus_ : while both ships were armed with similar types and tonnage of weaponry, the amount of armor battleships were equipped with far exceed that of a cruiser class vessel.

Spaatz glanced back at the _Prometheus_ , but she and her escorts had already reduced the assaulting corvette to nothing more than a pile of molten slag. Still, the delay, however brief, had been worth the loss of one entire warship as it had given the Covenant enough time to shift a number of their destroyers to a position where they could confront the advancing ships of Blue Group. Even as Blue Group quickly reformed and resumed their advance, they began getting raked with plasma fire as an entire squadron of four _CPV_ -class Covenant heavy destroyers and one _RPV_ -class light destroyer started shooting at them.

Plasma bolts and energy beams flashed across the void as the Covenant engaged with everything they had. Blue Group wasn't taking it lying down though, returning fire with missiles and heavy MAC rounds, as well as deploying all sorts of countermeasures and igniting their emergency thrusters to throw off the Covenant gunners' aim.

Most of the Covenant fire was directed at the two capital ships, which bore the brunt of the attack without much issue. However, switching to a real-time view, Spaatz could see the plasma bolts steadily eating its way through their armor, stripping them of their defenses to the point where it wouldn't be that difficult for something heavier to punch right through. And sure enough, all sorts of warning signs began flashing across Spaatz's screen as the destroyers began launching a vast array of plasma torpedoes at Blue Group.

"How many plasma torpedoes did the Covenant just launch?" Spaatz demanded to know, his attention fixated on the action.

"I count fifteen sir. Now sixteen. Seventeen! Seventeen torpedoes, in the air sir!"

Spaatz sharply inhaled. Seventeen torpedoes, even split between two ships, was more than enough to reduce an entire battleship to slag. And with the way Blue Group had been launching countermeasures earlier like they'd been going out of style, Spaatz wasn't sure how much they had left.

He anxiously watched as the torpedoes speed towards both the _Prometheus_ and the _Phoenix_. Both ships took action, beginning evasive maneuvers and firing missiles directly at the torpedoes to try and cause them to prematurely detonate. Explosions filled the vacuum as one by one, torpedoes began to detonate, but it wasn't enough; too many torpedoes were still getting through.

But as the remaining torpedoes closed the distance, both the _Prometheus_ and the _Phoenix_ abruptly ceased fire. Before Spaatz could inquire as to what the hell Ozzel was doing, all of Blue Group's escort frigates suddenly surged forward, and Spaatz numbly watched as they placed themselves between the torpedoes and both capital ships. On his display, the symbols representing those ships began dropping like flies as the torpedoes easily tore through the much lighter ships, destroying quite a few of them, but leaving the capital ships relatively unscathed.

At that sight, Spaatz couldn't help but shake his head in dismay. Rear Admiral Ozzel had a reputation for being a rather aggressive and stubborn commander, always looking for a fight and never refusing to back down, no matter the odds. His bullheaded nature had allowed him to blunder his way to victory through a number of rather difficult battles in the past, which helped him climb the ranks, but it had also given him a reputation of being a rather ruthless and uncaring commander who cared more about obtaining personal glory than the men and women under his command. Seeing the almost casual way Ozzel had just thrown away his escorts to ensure his capital ships remained fully operational, Spaatz could tell Ozzel's reputation wasn't completely undeserved.

Still, Spaatz found he couldn't entirely fault Ozzel. With a battle like this where so much was at stake and both sides being almost equal in strength, the need to hit the Covenant with enough speed and force to knock them off balance was paramount to victory. And that couldn't be accomplished if the UNSC's strongest ships were running at less than full strength, so some sacrifice was needed. Still, Spaatz couldn't help but wonder if there hadn't been some other way besides allowing so much loss of life.

At any case, at the very least, both the _Prometheus_ and the _Phoenix_ were trying to take advantage of the sacrifice of their escorts. They aggressively advanced towards the destroyers, and it was clear the crews of both ships were out looking for blood. Both ships simultaneously open fired on the same target, one of the heavy destroyers. Stripping away the destroyer's shields with missiles, they then started systematically pounding the ship with MAC shells.

The destroyer's armor managed to absorb at least three hits before their reactor was abruptly breached by a lucky shot from the _Prometheus_. The destroyer disintegrated as her reactor went critical, sending shockwaves rippling out in every direction, and causing massive damage to another destroyer that had been holding formation just a bit more closely than what would have been considered wise. Like a pair of sharks that suddenly smelled blood, both UNSC capital ships abruptly zeroed in on the damaged destroyer, and started hammering it with shells.

The other three Covenant destroyers weren't being idle while all this was going down though. While the _Prometheus_ and the _Phoenix_ were busy finishing off the wounded destroyer, the other members of the squadron were maneuvering around to approach them from the sides or the rear where, due to its design, the MACs wouldn't be able to target them, at least not without turning the entire ship around. Preoccupied with their target and having sacrificed most of their escorts, there was nothing the _Prometheus_ or the _Phoenix_ could do to stop them.

As Spaatz watched, the sole Covenant light destroyer started approaching the _Phoenix_ from "above." Brush off the fire that a nearby UNSC _Paris_ -class frigate was laying down as it desperately tried to prevent the destroyer from firing its weapons, Spaatz could see a massive amount of energy swirling at the destroyer's forward bow as she prepared to fire her energy projector at the space equivalent of point-blank range into the _Phoenix_. But before she could, the destroyer was abruptly struck by a trio of MAC rounds, knocking her off course.

Tracing the shells back to their source, Spaatz spotted Blue Group's assigned carriers taking to field. Unlike General Carter, Ozzel had opted to use his carriers in a more conventional way, keeping them behind his warships and only bring them forward to provide support, even though Navy carriers were far better equipped for ship-to-ship combat than Air Force ones as each ship was armed with a single MAC.

Fighters began pouring from the carriers, lending their support to the battle. Due to the amount of space the MACs and associated equipment took up, Navy carriers could only carry about half the amount of fighters their Air Force counterparts could despite being larger in size. Still, eighty some Longswords per carrier was nothing to scoff at, and Spaatz could see the Covenant destroyer squadron quickly buckling under the combined weight of all the UNSC ships. Though it was hard to tell in real time because of the distances involved, on his display, a noticeable hole was forming in the Covenant lines as a blue oasis in a sea of red dots began to bloom.

"Sir, it appears Blue Group has formally penetrated the Covenant defensive bubble. A direct attack route to the Covenant's capital ships is forming," Kanin reported. "Shall I have Red Group begin Phase III?"

Spaatz started to nod his head, but then hesitated. There was something about this battle that had been bothering him since before Gold Group began their attack, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. It was like... this entire battle was... almost... _too_ easy.

Of course, that was a patently ridiculous thought. Covenant resistance was fierce, as it always was as evident by the ever mounting casualties both Gold and Blue Groups were taking. And it's not like the situation was stable. While his forces were holding on to their positions for now, there was no denying their hold was tenuous at best. If he didn't order Red Group to begin their attack soon, the scales could easily tip in the Covenant's favor, and they would miss their chance at achieving their objective. There was nothing _easy_ about this battle.

And yet, Spaatz couldn't help but think back to the old Navy adage: "if everything is going to plan, then an ambush is about to occur." That, coupled with this feeling that he had missed something, something very crucial to the success or failure of this battle, was causing Spaatz's sense of danger, honed by decades of military service, to trigger.

"Kanin, how many carriers and capital ships do Gold and Blue Groups have left?" Spaatz asked.

He could sense the confused look that appeared over Kanin's face, but he answered nevertheless.

"All of them sir."

"Good. Create a new battle group, Green Group, and transfer control of the _Prometheus_ , _Illustrious_ , _Löwenhardt_ , as well as all their fighter wings and escorts to that group. Have Admiral Pike, Christopher that is, not Thomas, take command and order him to establish a rear guard at the edge of the fighting."

He glanced in Kanin's direction, only to see him with a rather bewildered look on his face.

"Sir," he slowly began, "with all due respect, removing several ships to establish an unnecessary rear guard in the middle of a battle is extremely inadvisable as it will considerably weaken Gold and Blue Group's ability to maintain their positions in the event of a concerted Covenant counterattack. May I suggest we simply proceed with the attack?"

Normally, Spaatz tried to avoid being one of those commanders who demanded absolute obedience to the very letter of his every order. It had been his experience that sort of leadership almost always completely destroyed morale and highly discouraged individual initiative. In his opinion, if a commander wasn't capable of explaining the rationale behind an order, then it probably wasn't that good of an order to begin with.

However, under these circumstances, absolutely frustrated by his own inability to fully understand his own concerns, the last thing Spaatz wanted was someone questioning his orders.

"Kanin, just do it," he tersely snapped, doing his best to keep his aggravation from appearing in his voice. He didn't think he succeeded though because Kanin immediately went rigid.

"Sir. Yes sir," was all he said though, and immediately turned away to execute Spaatz's commands.

Spaatz turned back to his screen, feeling just the tiniest bit guilty, but for the most part his mind was too preoccupied with the battle to give it much thought. He was missing something, something obvious, but as his ships began redeploying and Green Group was formed, he still couldn't figure out what "it" was.

"Sir, Admiral Pike has taken command of Green Group and has established a rear guard. However, the Covenant are beginning to press their attack against both Gold and Blue Groups. General Carter and Admiral Ozzel report they will be able to hold out, but not indefinitely. If Red Group is to attack, respectfully sir, they need to do it now," Kanin reported out loud, before leaning in closer, close enough Spaatz could start to count the individual hairs that constituted the fur on Kanin's face. "But sir, if you think this is a mistake, we can still call off the attack."

Spaatz had considered that, but unfortunately that wasn't an option.

"No," he finally said with a sigh. "This is probably our last opportunity to tip the balance of power in our direction. We need to attack, while we still have that chance. Captain Yirenkyi: COMMENCE THE ATTACK!"

"Yes sir!" Yirenkyi immediately bellowed. "Officer of the Deck, commence the attack! Come about and making your heading one seven seven three, all engines ahead, full!"

"Aye sir! Helmsman, come about to heading one seven seven three, all engines ahead, full!"

"Comms, signal the rest of the battle group, we're going straight for the jugular: those cruisers! We're going straight in, so stay on your toes people!"

"Aye aye sir!"

Spaatz gripped his restraints as the _Kilkis_ fired her fusion engines and began flying through the void at high speeds, followed by the remainder of the space assets of TF Whiskey. Out of all the battle groups, Red Group was by far the most powerful. As they had been intended to confront the Covenant's most powerful ships in the system, Red Group appropriately consisted of _**six**_ _Vindication_ -class battleships (UNSCs _Kilkis, Salamis, Lemnos, Daedalus, Sun Tzu,_ and _Korolev,_ ) as well as all the assault carriers, light carriers, and Air Force attack transports in the system for support. It was Spaatz's hope that the sheer amount of firepower represented there would be enough to outright cripple, if not destroy, all four Covenant capital ships.

Spaatz watched through his screen as Red Group headed in the direction of the fighting. Through the combined efforts of both Gold and Blue Groups, a corridor through the Covenant lines had been established, though it wasn't exactly the safest. Stray plasma fire kept streaking through the dead space between ships, crisscrossing through the opening, plus a number of dogfights were taking place inside the corridor itself. As Red Group took to the field, the _Kilkis_ was immediately set upon by an entire squadron of Seraphs.

"Incoming fighters bearing six one seven three!" the _Kilkis_ weapons officer warned.

"Ignore them!" Yirenkyi immediately ordered. "All battleships, continue the advance on those cruisers! All escort carriers: deploy your fighters!"

Spaatz glanced through his exterior cameras as the hanger doors to Red Group's escort ships slid open and dozens of spacecraft began deploying. While some of them _were_ dedicated space fighters, a majority of them weren't: instead they were Pelican and Darter gunships.

The problem was, due to the need to not only defend the rest of the planet from Covenant incursions, but also the high demand of ships needed for this attack, Spaatz had simply run out of fleet carriers, destroyers, and frigates. To provide escorts to his battleships as well as a fighter screen, Spaatz had been forced to turn to his remaining _Orion_ and _Poseidon_ -class carriers, as well as the Air Force's attack transports, none of which were "true" aircraft carriers but instead, more like amphibious assault ships. Because of that, the majority of their assigned aircraft were dropships, not fighters.

He watched as his ships take a moment to pair up before rocketing off in the direction of the incoming Seraphs. But before they could get far, the Seraphs started shooting.

Spaatz could see what few Longswords in the mix easily dodging the incoming fire but for the dropships, the task was more difficult. Despite being far smaller targets than the Longswords, the dropships weren't equipped with all the maneuvering thrusters dedicated space fighters had and could barely respond in time. And in fact, some couldn't: explosions filled Spaatz's screen as at least two Pelicans and a Darter were immediately hit and instantly destroyed, their lighter armor not designed for firepower of that magnitude.

His Longswords quickly returned fire, but for his dropships, they had to wait until they were able to get closer. While the dropships had been reequipped with AAMs, again, because they were never intended for air to air combat, they didn't even have the long range sensors the Longswords did and had to rely on the seekers of each individual warhead to obtain a lock.

The Longswords had already managed to fire a second salvo before the dropships were even able to fire back. At that point, another five dropships had already been destroyed whereas none of the Seraphs had taken any damage. Finally coming within weapons range, the dropships opened up with everything they had, sending all sorts of missiles in the Seraphs' direction, most of which proved to be fairly useless as Seraph countermeasures went to work.

"Those dropships don't stand a chance against those Seraphs," Spaatz mentioned out loud to Kanin.

"No sir. But we always knew this was going to happen sir. That's why we made sure some Longswords were part of the screen," Kanin reminded him. "If the dropships can lay down enough fire, the Seraphs would hopefully be too distracted to notice the Longswords coming in to finish them off. And at any case, the Seraphs willbe too busy dealing with the small craft to worry about our battleships, which is the entire point of a fighter screen."

"I know," Spaatz murmured. Still, the sight of so much ships blinking out of existence on his screen bothered him greatly. "The sooner we finish this, the better. How soon until we come within maximum effective weapons range?"

"Thirty seconds sir."

Spaatz glanced outside. Red Group had officially penetrated the Covenant's defenses; there were absolutely no more Covenant ships standing between them and the Covenant cruisers. It was time to finish this.

"Captain Yirenkyi, as soon as those cruisers come within range, you may fire at will!" Spaatz barked out.

"Yes sir! Weaps, bring up those cruisers and put them on the main screen!"

A 3D holographic image of all four Covenant cruisers suddenly appeared on the center console of the CIC. Red Group was approaching the ships from "above" and thus, Spaatz was able to plainly see all four cruisers floating over the skies of Actium.

The cruisers had adopted a sort of triangle formation: each one of the battlecruisers formed the corners and were holding position equal distance from each other, though the sensors did indicate each battlecruiser was actually floating at a different altitude. In the meantime, the heavy cruiser was positioned in the center of the triangle, directly over the Covenant landing site. Connect to the gravity lift, Spaatz could tell the Covenant were depositing all sorts of infantry and equipment onto the surface at a frantic pace. Spaatz knew his fleet had to take out those ships now, before UNSC defenses on the ground were overwhelmed by the Covenant Army.

"Computer, designated those battlecruisers as targets 1-Delta, 2-Delta, and 3-Delta, and then designated that heavy cruiser as target 1-Echo," Spaatz heard Yirenkyi command and on the center console, tags immediately began appearing on each of the ships. "Comms, signal the fleet, the following ships will engage the following cruiser: _Kilkis_ and _Salamis_ on 1-Delta, _Lemnos_ and _Daedalus_ on 2-Delta, and the _Sun Tzu_ and _Korolev_ on 3-Delta. All battleships are to engage and keep firing until their targets are either disabled or destroy, then all ships will shift fire to target 1-Echo."

"Copy that sir!"

"Weaps, giving me a firing solution on 1-Delta, lock on all missile batteries, and be prepared to fire on my mark!"

"Aye sir! Acquiring now! Target is… locked!"

"Standby!"

Spaatz leaned forward in his chair in anticipation of what was to come. The cruisers quickly began filling his screen as Red Group drew closer and closer to maximum effective firing range. Technically being in space, they could have engaged thirty minutes ago, but with the Covenant holding position over Actium, any MAC shot that failed to connect would have hit the surface and into UNSC held territory, causing massive damage. They had to get to a range where the Covenant wouldn't be able to dodge their shots so easily.

Although, at the moment, the Covenant didn't appear to be moving at all…

Spaatz frowned. Despite their very obvious approach, the Covenant hadn't broken formation at all. The battlecruisers' mission was no doubt to protect the heavy cruiser as she unloaded, but Spaatz would have thought it would have been in the Covenant's best interest to engage Red Group from as far away from the heavy cruiser as possible, so as to prevent the UNSC from coming within range. What were the Covenant doing?

Puzzled and more than a bit alarmed, Spaatz zoomed in on the battlecruiser the _Kilkis_ was gunning for, target 1-Delta. As he did, he noticed something was a little off about the cruiser. For one thing, it was pointed in the wrong direction, with its ventral hull facing down towards Actium, meaning the ship wouldn't be able to use their heavy energy projectors against the approaching battleships. And second, there appeared to have a number of structures installed on the dorsal side of the battlecruiser's hull, structures that looked familiar, but Spaatz just couldn't identify at the moment…

"Target in range!" the weapons officer suddenly yelled out.

"All batteries, FIRE! All ships, FIRE!" Yirenkyi roared.

The _Kilkis_ immediately fired all three of her MACs, as well as sending hundreds of Archer missiles in the direction of the Covenant. At the same time, so did every other battleship assigned to Red Group. It was singlehandedly one of the largest salvos Spaatz had ever see in his life: eighteen Mark IV heavy MAC rounds, nearly twelve hundred Archer missiles, and over seven thousand 50mm shells were thrown in the direction of the Covenant. Spaatz watched with bated breath as the ordnance quickly crossed streaked across the void towards the Covenant –

\- and caused the shields on all ships to light up as the shells struck home, but doing nothing else.

Spaatz frowned. He would have thought all of that ordnance would have at least disabled the shields. Battlecruisers were strong, but surely they weren't that strong.

"Second salvo!" Yirenkyi bellowed. "Fire when ready!"

Flames spat out from the front of the _Kilkis_ as she fired all three of her MACs again. A split second later, the other half of the battleship's arsenal of Archer missiles was sent following in its wake. Again, the ordnance streaked across the void and slammed into the Covenant, and again their shields flashed into existence, but nothing else happened.

"What the hell..." Spaatz muttered, that feeling of alarm growing by the second. He glance at Yirenkyi, who appeared to be just as confused as he felt.

"Weaps!" Yirenkyi started, then hesitated. "Fire... fire a third salvo! Maybe the third time's a charm!"

"Yes sir!" the weapons officer replied, a hint of nervousness creeping into the man's voice. "Firing main battery!"

The _Kilkis_ fired again. The MAC rounds smashed into the Covenant cruiser and _again_ , nothing happened. A number of nervous murmurings began to break out among the crew of the combat information center as they watched their rounds smash ineffectively against the Covenant's shields.

For his part, Spaatz was going his best to keep his panic under his control.

"Kanin," he barked. "Are our sensors calibrated correctly? We _do_ see these cruisers in front of us, and we _are_ hitting them, are we not?"

"We are sir," Kanin replied, sounding as much of a loss as anyone. "And the sensors _are_ reading properly."

"Then how have those shields not been disabled yet!? We've already hit them with more energy output than a single ODP super MAC would have!?"

"I have no idea sir, all I know is I'm not even reading a fluctuation in their shield strength."

"Admiral Spaatz!"

Spaatz jerked and glanced over in Yirenkyi's direction. "Yes?"

"Sir, permission to hit the Covenant with a Shiva?" he asked, and Spaatz could hear the slight desperation creeping into the man's voice.

"Granted!"

"Weaps, load up Shivas in tubes one and three! Comms, signal the _Salamis_ to do the same and standby to fire on my mark!"

"Sir, nukes are primed and ready!"

"Standby... FIRE!"

The weapons officer jammed down on a couple of buttons and outside, Spaatz could see two missiles departing from their vertical launch systems mounted on the _Kilkis_ ' dorsal hull and rapidly speed in the direction of the Covenant, being joined by two other missiles launched by the _Salamis_. He leaned forward as he waited for the Covenant to evade, or launch decoys, or return fire, or do _something_ but they just sat there, waiting for... what exactly? Spaatz had no idea but suddenly, he realized he had no interest in waiting around to find out.

"Fall back."

"Excuse me sir?"

Spaatz snapped his head in Kanin's direction. "Fall back! Kanin, signal a general withdraw, I want all battle groups to fall back to our launch position! Initiate a withdraw, NOW!"

"Sir, I -"

Whatever Kanin was about to say was cut off when there was a brilliant flash of white light as the Shivas struck home. Spaatz glanced back at his screen, only to see target 1-Delta emerging completely unscathed and he couldn't help but gap. How...?

"Sir, we're detecting some sort of movement around target 1-Echo!" _Kilkis_ ' officer of the deck suddenly bellowed.

"What type of movement!?" Spaatz demanded before Yirenkyi could say anything as he hastily shifted his screen to the heavy cruiser in time to see some sort of... shimmering field dissipating revealing...

"It appears to be... ships?"

At that very moment, two realizations suddenly struck Spaatz, and he abruptly realized what he'd been forgetting. One: if UNSC High Command had been able to send Spaatz reinforcements in the form of multiple battleship strike groups, then why hadn't the Covenant done the same? Two: _ORS_ -class heavy cruisers were known for, among other things, _their stealth capabilities_.(3)

The stealth field around the heavy cruiser abruptly dissipated, whether because it had been disrupted by the radiation from the Shivas or because the Covenant decided the jig was up he didn't know, but it revealed an entirely new Covenant battle group that had previously gone undetected.

In that instant -

"Admiral, we're detecting enemy ships in sector forty-seven!" the OOD screamed. "They're launching fighters!"

At the same time, a small robotic voice chimed, _"Slipspace rupture detected."_

"Sir, I'm detecting an entire Covenant task force emerging from slipspace on our six!" Kanin warned. "We're under attack!"

"Admiral! Emergency message from Admiral Ozzel: the Covenant are launching a massive counterattack against his battle group! He's requesting reinforcements otherwise he won't be able to hold!"

"Alert! Covenant battlecruisers are rotating on their longitudinal axis. I'm detecting a massive surge of energy: they're charging weapons!"

Spaatz sucked in a huge breath of air as his worst nightmare was suddenly coming to life. The Covenant commander had set the stage masterfully, and despite his misgivings, Spaatz had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. There was no other way to put it: he had fucked up. The only thing left to do was to minimize the bleeding.

"Kanin, alert Admiral Pike: Green Group is to counterattack immediately! I don't care if he has to sacrifice everyone single one of his ships to do it, but he is to hold our rear door open so the rest of the Task Force can get out!" Spaatz roared. "Comms, signal General Carter, she is to take her ship, all her naval support and immediately reinforce Green Group's position! The rest of her force, send to Blue Group and HOLD THAT CORRIDOR! UNSCs _Sun Tzu_ and _Korolev_ , envelope right and provide covering fire while the rest of the battleships retreat! Gray Group, target those cruisers and **FIRE EVERYTHING**! Captain Yirenkyi, get us the _fuck_ out of here, NOW! Weaps, target those new warships! Target those fighters! Target everything! **SOMEBODY FIRE!** "

Alarms began shrieking out as the crew of the CIC frantically moved to execute Spaatz's orders. There was no hiding it now: the scent of panic was flooding the air.

Spaatz grabbed his restraints as he felt the _Kilkis_ rapidly turn to starboard, trying her best to turn around so she could flee while on screen, the _Sun Tzu_ and the _Korolev_ surged forward, firing every single weapon they had at the Covenant cruisers, doing their best to lay down covering fire. At the same time, missiles were rising from the surface of Actium and heading for the same target: covering fire from the missile submarines of the Actium Navy that made up the bulk of Gray Group's firepower.

All sorts of projectiles smashed against the battlecruisers' shields, but it wasn't enough to deter them from finishing their half turn on their longitudinal axis.

"INCOMING!"

The cruisers fired and a bright blue beam lit up the void.

"Fuck! The _Korolev_ 's been hit! _Korolev_ is down, I say again, THE _KOROLEV_ IS DOWN!"

Spaatz glanced at the screen to see the _Korolev_ slowly beginning to fall apart. The energy projector had slammed right into the _Korolev_ 's nose and burned its way lengthwise through the entire ship. Spaatz started to give the order to scramble the search and rescue Pelicans when the _Korolev_ abruptly exploded, possibly because her armory went up, possibly because her reactor had gone critical. But whatever the case was, it was clear no one had survived.

"Enemy warships advancing on the _Sun Tzu_!"

The hidden Covenant task force had finally pulled away from the heavy cruiser's orbit, allowing Spaatz to see just how many warships had been hidden there. It wasn't much, only two _CPV_ -class heavy destroyers and five _CRS_ -class light cruisers, but these were fresh, fully equipped and fully armed ships, unlike Spaatz's battleships. Plus, they were being supported by fire from those battlecruisers.

"Kanin, order the _Lemnos_ to move up, take the _Korolev_ 's place, and provide support to the _Sun Tzu_!" Spaatz snapped, even as the _Sun Tzu_ was struck several times by plasma torpedoes, causing fire and explosions to break out across her hull. "Captain Yirenkyi! Get us to Blue Group's position so we can provide covering fire for the _Lemnos_ and _Sun Tzu_ 's retreat!"

"Sir, Admiral Ozzel is reporting his position is rapidly becoming untenable and is requesting permission to withdraw," Kanin warned.

"What, NO! Tell that son of a bitch he is to hold his position until the battleships are able to fully withdraw!"

"Ah, sir, I think that might be too late: sensors indicate Blue Group is already initiating a withdraw!"

"WHAT!?" Spaatz demanded and rotated his screen around. Sure enough, what remained of Blue Group was slowly pulling back, and Covenant ships were rapidly pushing ahead to fill the gap. "Kanin, relieve Admiral Ozzel of his command and have his executive officer take charge! Inform him he is to _hold_ his position no matter the circumstances, and that I'm redeploying all of Red Group's escort carriers to assist!"

"Aye sir!"

"Captain Yirenkyi! Our window is closing! Do whatever you have to, just get this ship out of this hole!"

"Sir!"

"Comms, signal the _Sun Tzu_ and the _Lemnos_ and order both ships to break contact and fall back, now! Weaps, give them covering fire!"

"Admiral, sir!" the communications officer screamed, catching Spaatz's attention. "The _Sun Tzu_ is reporting massive damage across her entire hull! All of her MACs have been destroyed, two of her engines are out, and structural integrity is failing! Acting captain Commander Hunter is reporting he doesn't believe his ship will be able to hold out much longer!"

Spaatz quickly pulled up a status report of the _Sun Tzu_. It was actually worse than the communications officer was saying. Just a single glance told Spaatz the ship was already dead, with her main fusion reactor disabled and her primary bridge destroyed, and all secondary systems failing. With her ammunition reserves down to sixteen percent, it was clear there were nothing left the ship could do.

"Comms! Signal the _Sun Tzu_ : order Commander Hunter to initiate Cole Protocol and then..." Spaatz swallowed. "Abandon ship."

"Sir, yes sir!"

"Kanin, have the _Lemnos_ come about and see if they can pick up the survivors and scramble the search and rescue Pelicans. _Kilkis_ , _Salamis_ , and _Daedalus_ , covering fire for the _Lemnos_ , now!"

"Sir, the _Lemnos_ is getting swarmed by fighters and Captain Usman is reporting he's not going to able to make it to the _Sun Tzu_!" Kanin warned.

"Sir, message from General Carter! The _Prometheus_ has been destroyed and Admiral Pike has fallen! General Carter is taking over Green Group, however she is also reporting roughly half her assigned fighters have been destroyed and warns she's not sure how much longer she'll be able to hold out!"

"Admiral, the commander of Blue Group is reporting his flagship, the _Phoenix_ , is receiving massive amounts of damage and will not be able to maintain his position for much longer!"

Spaatz pinched his nose as, on screen, a red wave was threatening to overwhelm the rest of his Task Force. It was clear he couldn't dally any longer; if he delayed anymore, none of his ships were going to make it. It was time to cut his losses. It was time to make some hard decisions.

"Kanin, have..." Spaatz hesitated. "Kanin, I am hereby ordering the UNSC _Lemnos_ to hold their position and delay the Covenant advance. The _Kilkis_ , _Salamis_ , and _Daedalus_ are to use this time to retreat passed Blue Group. As soon as we're clear, Blue Group will then fall back."

He glanced at Kanin, only to see a rather shocked look on his face.

"Sir, that's -" he began.

"Kanin, was any part of that order unclear!?" Spaatz snarled.

"No sir!"

"Then see that they get executed _**now**_ , Sailor!"

"Aye sir. All battleships, fall back!"

"Weaps, break contact and cease fire! Save our rounds for self-defense purposes only! Helm, check thirty degrees port, all engines ahead, flank! Get us out of here!"

The _Kilkis_ rapidly spun to the right as her guns fell silent. Spaatz could feel the ship speeding in the direction of Blue Group, and he switched to his rear cameras to see _Lemnos_ making a reckless charge at one of the incoming destroyers. She rammed into a light cruiser that wasn't quite able to clear out of the way in time, instantly destroying the ship, but the blow did knock the _Lemnos_ off course and the battleship only managed to scrap against the destroyer instead of hitting it head on. Seconds later, the _Lemnos_ was speared amidship by two energy projectors, cutting the ship in half. Despite this, crew refused to go down without a fight as both halves continued to fire nonstop, but with Covenant fighters and warships closing in from all directions, the fighting was pretty much over.

The _Lemnos_ did manage to buy the rest of the battle group the chance to retreat and as the _Kilkis_ sped past Blue Group's position, the battle group's ships enveloped the _Kilkis_ in preparation for their own retreat, blocking what remained of the _Lemnos_ from view.

"Sir! General Carter's defense are failing! Enemy ships have broken through in sector three five niner!"

Spaatz shook his head to refocus himself. "Captain Yirenkyi, hit those ships head on! Our job now is to hold open our corridor to allow Blue Group the chance to withdraw!"

"Yes sir!" Yirenkyi replied. "Alright guys, we're not out of the woods just yet! Helm, check port fifteen degrees and drop down to attack speed! Weaps, find me a target!"

The _Kilkis_ started slowing down, allowing Spaatz a chance to see the Covenant task force that had been attempting to close in from the rear. No new battlecruisers or heavy cruisers had arrived, thank goodness, but the new task force did include two _DDS_ -class carriers, as well as fresh new corvettes and destroyers.

"Captain, carrier 1-Foxtrot is beginning to deploy fighters!" the OOD warned.

"We can't let them finish! All batteries, target that carrier! FIRE!"

The _Kilkis_ fired all three of her MACs in rapid succession, and Spaatz waited with bated breath as the rounds sped down range. The first two rounds smashed into the carrier's shields, causing them to light up, but then the third rammed home and they instantly shattered.

Spaatz let out a sigh of relief. Whatever had managed to supercharge the battlecruisers' shields, it clearly didn't extend to the rest of the Covenant fleet. That was good as it meant there was a chance Task Force Whiskey actually might make it out alive.

"Lock on to those hanger bays with Archer pods Echo through Hotel and fire when ready!"

"Missiles away sir!"

The missiles streaked towards the Covenant carrier, only for them to start prematurely exploding as the Covenant fighters deliberately started flying in their path, trying to intercept the missiles before they could hit their mothership. Before anyone could find out who would prevail, the missiles or the fighters, a MAC round suddenly plowed through the mass and slammed into the carrier. All sorts of secondary explosions began going off as the MAC shell smashed into the hanger bay and out the other side, cutting through whatever stood in its path.

Tracing the MAC back to its source, Spaatz spotted the _Phoenix_ , heavily damaged but clearly still functioning, coming up the _Kilkis_ ' flank in support. Behind her, Spaatz could see the _Salamis_ and the _Daedalus_ engaging the rest of the Covenant warships, doing their best to keep them at bay.

"Captain, continue engaging!" Spaatz ordered. "Blue Group, push past Red Group, rendezvous with Green Group, and hold the line! Kanin, give me a sitrep on those battlecruisers! What are they doing!?"

"The battlecruisers appeared to be hold formation over Actium sir," Kanin immediately reported. "They have not moved at all since we engaged them, though I cannot even begin to speculate as to why."

"That's fine, let them stay there for now! Keep an eye on them and let me know if they change their mind!"

"Yes sir!"

Outside, the remaining ships of Blue Group were streaming passed the battleships and heading to support Green Group in holding the Covenant back. In the meantime, both the _Kilkis_ and the _Phoenix_ continued to pound target 1-Foxtrot with MAC rounds, which was steadily falling apart under the barrage, leaving behind only about a hundred or so fighters that had managed to escape the ship before its destruction. Spaatz could see them ignite their afterburners and go straight for the _Phoenix_ , most likely in an attempt to finish the ship off.

"Fighters, incoming!"

"Helm, check five degrees up and put us on an intercept course between those fighters and the _Phoenix_!" Yirenkyi barked. "Admiral, any chance we could get some fighter support?"

Spaatz quickly studied his screen, trying to figure which one of his fleet carriers still had fighters left.

"Kanin, reroute the _São Paulo_ to our location and have their fighter wings assist!" he commanded.

"Copy that sir, rerouting now!"

"Have the _Phoenix_ push past Green and Blue's position and fall back to our assembly location! And have Heliopolis Station standing by to provide covering fire if need be!"

"Sir!"

Spaatz glanced around. The Longswords from the _São Paulo_ , supported by anti-aircraft fire from the _Kilkis_ , were rushing towards the Covenant fighters. In the meantime, the _Phoenix_ had broken contact and was very hurriedly pushing through Blue Group's position, and back towards the area where TF Whiskey had initially rallied before the battle had even begun.

"Red Group, break contact and fall back!" Spaatz ordered. "Kanin, signal Blue and Green Groups to cover us!"

"Helm, check nineteen degrees down and get us out of this shit!"

"Nineteen degrees down, aye sir!"

The _Kilkis_ started moving away, followed closely by the _São Paulo_ and her fighters. The Covenant weren't interested in letting them get away that easily, however the remaining carriers of Blue Group, along with the cruisers of Green Group, sent a few dozen MAC rounds in the Covenant's direction, preventing them from forming up. They continued to fire at the Covenant as the remainder of Red Group streamed passed.

"Red Group, establish a firing position at this location," Spaatz jabbed a finger at his screen, marking a random spot in orbit. "Lay down some covering fire so that Blue and Green Groups can fall back to our original assembly location. Blue and Green Groups, fall back, now!"

The ships of Blue and Green Groups quickly broke contact. As their fire slackened, the Covenant warships started to try and pursue, but fire from Red Group cut through their ranks once again, prevented them from forming up.

"Red Group, fall back now!" Spaatz ordered as the last of the ships from Green Group reported they had returned to the assembly area.

Spaatz's remaining battleships quickly turned tail and started to fall back. Glancing through his rear scopes, Spaatz noticed most of the Covenant warships had given up the pursuit, although one Covenant heavy destroyer refused to give up the chase, doggedly following in the _Kilkis'_ wake. Plasma bolts streaked in the _Kilkis'_ direction and while most of them missed due to the extreme ranges the destroyer was firing at, Spaatz was more concerned about the possibility of the destroyer obtaining a lock on the _Kilkis_ with a plasma torpedo.

"Admiral Spaatz to Heliopolis Station," Spaatz said into his radio.

" _Go for Heliopolis!"_

"Take out that destroyer that's on our tail!"

" _Copy that sir! Firing in three, two, one –"_

Several thousand kilometers in front of the _Kilkis_ , emerging from around the crest of the planet, was a single orbital defense platform, super MAC primed and ready.

" _ **MARK!"**_

Heliopolis Station fired, and Spaatz glanced at his rear scopes in time to see the MAC round cut the destroyer in half. Both halves of the ship continued forward for a couple hundred meters before the ship exploded, almost acting as an official signal to the end of the battle.

But as the _Kilkis_ rejoined what was left of Task Force Whiskey, Spaatz's mind wasn't occupied with the battle that had just ended, but that of the battles yet to come. His attack had failed.

Badly.

What were the consequences going to be for the rest of the campaign?

* * *

1\. The UNSC _Löwenhardt_ is named for Oberleutnant(Senior Lieutenant) Erich Löwenhardt **,** a fighter pilot for the Deutsche Luftstreikträfte (Imperial German Army Air Service) during World War I. As a military cadet enrolled at the military school in Lichtfelder when WWI broke out in 1914, Löwenhardt initially saw service with the German Army's Infantry Regiment Nr. 141 as an enlisted infantryman, seeing service on the Eastern Front fighting against Russia where he most notably fought in the Battle of Tannenberg. As a reward for his bravery during that battle, he was commissioned as an officer. In early 1915, then-LeutnantLöwenhardt was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st Class for saving the lives of five wounded men.

In 1916, Löwenhardt volunteered for service with the Imperial German Army Air Service, becoming a full-fledged fighter pilot in March of 1917. Between March of 1917 and August of 1918, Löwenhardt would score a total of fifty-four victories, making him German's third highest flying ace of WWI. Unfortunately, on August 10, 1918, moments after scoring his fifty-fourth victory, Löwenhardt suffered a mid-air collision with another German aircraft. Both pilots bailed out, however Löwenhardt's parachute failed to open, and he fell to his death. He was only 21 years old.

2\. Going along with the idea that the Air Force would do their best to avoid using nautical terminology with their ships as I mentioned in my notes for chapter 12, I feel like the Air Force unit structure would also be vastly different from the Navy. So, for example, while Navy carriers are organized into Carrier Strike Groups, Air Force carriers would be organized into "Air Divisions," which would consist of at least one fleet carrier, the carrier's escorts, assigned fighter and support aircraft groups, and whatever support squadrons needed to man and maintain all the ships (i.e., all the maintainers, ordnanceman, security forces, etc.)

3\. According to Halopedia, _ORS-_ class cruisers "boast a variety of stealth-related advancements." To be honest, I interpret this more like the stealth coating one would find on a B-2 bomber or F-22 Raptor, but it worked out better for this chapter if it meant more like the cruiser was capable of generating a stealth field around it (similar to the way the Protoss Motherships work in Starcraft 2.)

Sci-Fi References

I hope you guys don't mind all the references to some other popular sci-fi series. I was running low on names and I decided just to have some fun.

For those of you who didn't pick up on them:

\- Samantha Carter is one of the main characters from the TV series _Stargate SG-1_

\- Admiral Ozzel is from the Star Wars series, specifically _Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back_ (he's the Imperial officer Darth Vader chokes to death just prior to the assault on the Rebel base on Hoth)

\- His unnamed executive officer was intended to be Admiral Piett, also of the Star Wars series, though I felt naming him as such would be _too_ blatant (though I suppose it's too late for that.) Like Ozzel, he first appears in _Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back_ as the man who replaces Ozzel, and later appears again in _Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi_ where he acts as essentially the number three guy for the Empire.

\- Admiral Christopher Pike is from _Star Trek_ , and the captain of the _USS Enterprise_ preceding Captain Kirk.

Ship Names

A general explanation of the ship names:

\- UNSCs _Leviathan_ and _Hannibal_ are both canon ships that have appeared in the Halo official novels: the UNSC _Leviathan_ first appeared in _Halo: The Fall of Reach_ , most notably during the Battle of Sigma Octanus IV, whereas the UNSC _Hannibal_ appeared in _Halo: First Strike,_ though it's only briefly mentioned and very little details are given about it.

\- UNSCs _Phoenix_ , _Prometheus_ , _Daedalus, Sun Tzu_ and _Korolev_ are all named after ships from the Stargate universe (no particular reason, just thought I'd stay consistent with the theme I already had going so far. Although in doing so, it creates an issue with the UNSC _Phoenix_ as there already is a class of ships in the Halo universe called the Phoenix, the _Phoenix-_ class colony ship, of which the UNSC _Spirit of Fire_ (from _Halo Wars)_ is one.)

\- UNSCs _Kilkis, Salamis,_ and _Lemnos_ , as explained in chapter 8 (but just in case you guys forgot) are all named after former Greek battleships (as the real-life Battle of Actium took place just off the coast of Greece)

\- UNSCs _Liaoning_ , _Illustrious_ , and _São Paulo_ (again, explained in chapter 8 but re-explaining it now) are all named after real-world aircraft carriers (Chinese, British, and Brazilian, respectively)

\- UNSCs _Bong_ and _Löwenhardt_ are named after real-world fighter aces whereas UNSC _Iqbal_ is an original creation (see chapter 4 for more details.)

General Notes

One last thing I want to address before we finish this chapter off: the classified program that Carter was supposedly working on. That's actually intended to be more than just a thinly veiled reference to the Stargate universe.

One thing that has always bugged me about the Halo Universe is the fact the creators made ONI some sort of omnidisciplinary military service agency (yes, I've taken that word from TV Tropes.) Realistically (and I do realize the foolishness of talking about realism in a story containing super-human soldiers fighting against interplanetary aliens,) a lot of what ONI does should be done by multiple departments and agencies across multiple service branches. The creators have sort of handwaved that away by saying ONI officially and using less than savory means managed to absorb all the functions of all those other departments and agencies, but I don't really like that explanation. So, I decided to depart somewhat from canon and reorganize things.

Without going into too much detail (mainly because I haven't really thought about it that much because it's probably not going to play much, if any, part in this story,) each of the four military service branches (Navy, Marine Corps, Army, and Air Force) is responsible for their own avenue of exploration, research, and theater of war. As the largest branch, both in size and funding, I see the Navy as being responsible for the largest threat humanity is currently facing: the Covenant. By that, I mean the Navy is responsible for gathering all the intelligence they can on the Covenant, researching Covenant technology, developing ways to defeat the Covenant, and basically controlling all the information in regards to the war itself. Essentially what they're currently doing in canon.

The Marine Corps on the other hand, is responsible for the development and research of homegrown technology, i.e., stuff developed by humans. In my headcanon, I see the Marine Corps as having been the ones to really push for the development of the Spartan program, though that required far more money than they actually had which is why ultimately the Navy took over (I feel this is partially supported in canon by the fact that of the five known candidates from the Spartan I program, four of them are specially mentioned as being Marines, whereas the Spartan IIs were all eventually enlisted into the Navy.) Because of their infantry and ground warfare focus, I also see the Marine Corps as having been responsible for some of the more exotic weapons that we see in the games like the Spartan Laser, the Railgun, and vehicles like the Mantis, the Gauss Warthog, and the Rhino (from Halo Wars.)

The Army, given their (if we use the US Army as a model) vast size, massive logistics capability, and slightly more defensive nature, is responsible for the fight against the Insurgency, having assume those duties from the Marine Corps once the war against the Covenant began. I might be reading too much into this, but I think this has actually been hinted in the Halo Universe already: in the novel, _Halo: Contact Harvest,_ Avery Johnson (a Marine) is shown training the Harvest militia to fight against the local Insurgency, but the Insurgency itself never really gets mentioned in the games (which take place thirty years later, plus the games all take place from the perspective of either Navy personnel or Marines.) The one mention of the Insurgency in the games, at least in the later years of the Covenant-Human War (and the only one that I can remember,) is from _Halo: Reach,_ which primarily takes place from the perspective of an Army run Spartan team.

Also, speaking of Noble Team, as mentioned in promotional materials provided for _Halo: Reach_ , Noble Team had spent most of their career running operations against Innie targets as opposed to Covenant targets.

Finally, there's the Air Force. As the smallest and least funded branch, I see them as having been responsible for an avenue of research that many people (in universe at least) would have thought would not yield much results mostly because there wasn't much information about them to begin with: the Forerunners. Admittedly, I'm drawing most of my conclusion from memory and it's a bit rusty, but prior to the discovery of the Halo rings, the UNSC didn't have much information about the Forerunners, basically only knowing the Forerunners existed at some point and that was about it. Because of the limited avenue of research, no other military branch would have been all that interested in exploring it further (because it would be harder to justify their funding) and thus, by default, the Air Force would have gotten it. It would only be after the discovery of stuff like the Halo rings, the Ark, and the planet of Onyx that people realized there was actually something worth studying, resulting in the Navy and ONI (forcibly) taking over that field of research.

(Side note: as a result of this explanation, I see the ODST mission as depicted in the Halo anime short _The Babysitter_ from _Halo Legends_ as having been conducted on behalf of the Air Force.)

So, in conclusion (because this wasn't confusing enough /s,) the "secret" program that Carter had been working on was doing research on Forerunner stuff, perhaps on the planet of Onyx or maybe even at the Forerunner facility located under CASTLE Base on Reach (I haven't made up my mind about that.)

Anyways, that's about it for this chapter. Sorry about the confused rambles at the end there. Thanks for stopping by and I hope to see you guys next time.

(Last note, I want to extend my congratulations to my editor **, Dark7881** for recently finishing his own fanfiction. His Command and Conquer fanfiction, **Project Genesis: Operation Final Justice** is up and available on this very website for your enjoyment.)


	17. Chapter 17

**To the Guest** who left a review asking whether or not I will be including Colonel Menteith's speech for this battle:

Yes, that is my intention, but not until much later in the story. The way I envision it in my head, Colonel Menteith's speech won't come until a few days before (spoiler alert! (sort of but not really)) he and whatever remains of the 53rd Armored Division detonates the HAVOK nukes in the Covenant staging area. I know he's supposed to give the speech on the 10th of May which, if readers are following my (non-canon) dates, would occur in four days in this story, but that's one of the things I'm deviating from canon on as I feel like his speech should be more of a last-minute, desperate-move, inspirational thing (sort of a "men, just give me one last effort" as opposed to "men, let's get out there and fight.")

But, like I said, that won't happen until much, _much,_ _ **much**_ later in the story. In the meantime, thanks for the review, and I'm glad you're liking it so far.

 **To Broman:**

You are correct, I did make both UNSC and Covenant ships just a bit stronger than they appear in the games, mainly because when I was experimenting with chapter 3, I found it rather difficult to write out an entire chapter of a space battle if both sides, the UNSC especially, were destroyed fairly quickly. That's not to say it couldn't be done; if the battle was smaller, like say, a dual between two ships, then the focus of the battle could be less about the fighting and more about the maneuvering (kind of like how it was done in the Halo novel Halo: The Fall of Reach where the Captain Keyes and the UNSC Iroquois is forced to fend off three Covenant warships.) But in doing so, I wouldn't be able to depict the sheer scope of fighting I imagine that would be taking place if an entire planet was invaded.

As for why the Covenant haven't began orbital bombardments, there are actually several reasons. First, as we just saw in chapter 16, the UNSC Navy is still very active in the system and if the Covenant were to turn their attention to the surface, it could potentially leave their ships vulnerable to a UNSC counterattack.

Second, as I mentioned back in chapter 8, the entire planet of Actium is the Covenant's prize. In short, the Covenant want to take over the Actium because of the natural resources available on and below the surface and because of that, they're trying to avoid doing serious damage to the planet. (Though, this is only day one of the invasion, so that could change in the future.)

Third, like you said, I would imagine most military bases would be at least partially protected from orbital bombardment, even before the Covenant war began (I'd imagine the UNSC wasn't above blasting a troublesome Innie base from orbit if it suited their purpose.)

Lastly, dont forget in canon, the Elites have been shown to be very honorable (even though their sense of honor is rather warped; they do go around murdering unarmed civilians and children after all.) So the idea of destroying a target from orbital (at least on the first day) I'd imagine wouldn't sit well with Elite commanders, so I think it's something they would push to avoid.

Anyways, I hope this has adequately addressed your concerns. As always, thanks so much for the review!

Moving on, just a general warning to my readers about this chapter: this chapter is short. Very short. In fact, coming in at about 2600 words, it's actually one of the shortest chapters I've ever written and in fact, out of everything I've posted on this website, this chapter might actually the third shortest thing I've written. Why is it so short you might ask?

…because?

Honestly, it just felt right. To try and make up for it somewhat, I've added some extended head-canon notes at the end, which may or may not interest some people, and may or may not be comprehensible.

* * *

 **Chapter 17**

 **UNSC** _ **Kilkis**_ **, High Orbit, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
1107**

 **Spaatz**

" - and battleships _Korolev_ , _Sun Tzu_ , and _Lemnos_ were all destroyed with all hands lost. Other fatalities include the UNSC _Prometheus_ and the UNSC _Illustrious_ , though search and rescue Pelicans were able to recover roughly forty-five percent and seventy percent of their crews, respectively," Kanin recited to the room at large, a somber look on his furry face. "Other casualties include: carrier _São Paulo_ , who suffered damage to her cooling system resulting in an overload of all three of her fusion reactors. Carrier _Liaoning_ , whose primary bridge was destroyed during the battle, disrupting her navigation. During the loss, she inadvertently collided with carrier _Löwenhardt_ , resulting in the destruction or damaging of all weapon systems located on the _Liaoning_ 's dorsal hull, as well as damage to all of the port side hanger bay entrances to the _Löwenhardt_."

"More casualties include carrier _Richard Bong_ , who was hit by a kamikaze Banshee on her forward bow resulting in thirty casualties and damage to her primary sensor and communications array. Carrier _Suzan Iqbal_ , who suffered in an explosion inside one of her hanger bays resulting in hull breach and one hundred and thirteen casualties. Battleship _Phoenix_ , who suffered massive damage to roughly eighty percent of her hull. Cruiser -"

Spaatz held up his hand, stopping Kanin before he could continue. "Did any of these casualties suffer from irreparable damage?" he demanded to know.

"No sir. The _Richard Bong_ will require a replacement of her primary sensors, which can be accomplished within twelve hours although she is capable of operating with reduced efficiency on secondary systems. The _Iqbal_ will require repairs for the hull breach, though work has already begun and the ship should be operating at maximum efficiency within twenty-seven hours. The _São Paulo_ will need a complete overhaul of her reactors, though that will take, at minimum, seventy-two hours."

"The _Liaoning_ , _Löwenhardt_ , and _Phoenix_ will all require several days in the dry docks, though strictly speaking, as neither ship suffered damage to critical systems, both the _Liaoning_ and the _Löwenhardt_ are capable of combat operations. Abet, they would be operating at fifty percent operational status. The _Phoenix,_ on the other hand, will require a minimum of seven Actium days of repair in the dry docks(1), though that time may be able to be reduced depending on crew availability and supplies."

"Priority number one is to get all battleships back up to within ninety percent combat operational status," Spaatz interrupted before Kanin could continue. "Priority number two is to get the weapons, if nothing else, on the naval carriers back up; in a pinch, at the very least I can use those carriers in an anti-ship role. I don't care about the Air Force carriers: they're not intended for frontline combat and besides, until we get more fighters, we're not going to be able to replace their air wings, making them nothing more than oversized anti-aircraft platforms."

Spaatz heard a slight cough and he glanced at the source. Aside from Kanin and himself, the chiefs of his intelligence departments(2) were also in attendance. The cough had originated from Colonel Kendrick, the head of the Air Force Intelligence Command, so Spaatz turned to face him.

"You disagree Colonel Kendrick?"

 _"Not so much a disagreement sir, but an inquiry,"_ Kendrick corrected. _"Could we not simply replace the Air Force carriers' air wings with the fighters from the navy? After all, if you intend to use your carriers in an anti-ship role, then what would the point of having fighters be?"_

"There aren't enough navy fighters to replace all three carrier air wings," Spaatz replied. "Furthermore, I'm concerned about the size difference between the two different types of fighters, plus the difference in training between ground crews, the different logistic requirements of the fighters, etc."

Kendrick nodded and Spaatz waited until he fell silent before continuing.

"Let's move on. Covenant casualties. What do we know about them?"

Spaatz glanced at Commander al-Cygni, who took it as her cue to begin speaking.

 _"At the moment, my department is currently analyzing every scrap of data we've managed to obtain so far. Our current dilemma, however, is there is some confusion as to which ships were already in the system prior to this operation, and what arrived during the course of the battle. The task force that was hidden by the heavy cruiser for example: we're still attempting to determine whether or not they arrived at the same time as the cruiser did and have just been hidden this entire time, or they're ships that were already in the system and only moved into hiding once the Covenant realized what the situation was, or if they're a brand new task force that arrived as reinforcements and were immediately moved into hiding. The last option is probably the most likely, as the heavy cruiser was unaccounted for during much of the initial stages of the battle, and with most of our reconnaissance and surveillance grid having been damaged by the fighting, if the Covenant had emerged from slipspace around, say, Tenedos, we could have easily missed their arrival."_

Kendrick leaned forward. _"So,_ **do** _we have a count of the amount of damage TF Whiskey inflicted on the Covenant?"_

 _"We have an idea, but no specific numbers at this juncture,"_ al-Cygni admitted.

"None of which matters because we know for certain we weren't able to disable, much less damage, any of those cruisers, making this entire operation a failure," Spaatz snapped.

 _"With all due respect sir, I wouldn't go so far as to call it a_ complete _failure_ ," al-Cygni argued. _"Preliminary data does suggest TF Whiskey managed to inflict just as much damage on the Covenant as they did to us."_

 _"Furthermore sir,"_ Kendrick added, _"we are still receiving reinforcements. The 97th Air Division just arrived in system sir, bring not only an entirely new carrier and air wings, but our first ground troop reinforcements: the Army's 222nd Airborne Division."_

 _"Unfortunately, that's not as beneficial as it may seem,"_ Harper interjected. _"The 222nd was just rotated out of the Newsaka Campaign roughly a week ago and were on their way back to garrison for rest and refit before they were diverted here. As such, they're not at full strength._

 _"How bad is it?"_ al-Cygni asked.

Harper shrugged. _"Not counting individual augmentations from the Air Force?"_ he said, tilting his head in Kendrick's direction. _"The division is only at roughly twenty-four percent of their total authorized strength."_

 _"That's still a little over seven thousand soldiers(4), is it not?"_ Kendrick pointed out. _"Not an insignificant number."_

 _"Yes, but how many troops have the Covenant managed to deploy onto the surface?"_ al-Cygni asked.

"That hardly matters at the moment because while the Covenant cruisers continue to hold position over their landing site, they will be able to continue deploying ground troops indefinitely," Spaatz pointed out. "And with those cruisers in the way, we won't be able to deploy our reinforcements to where they're needed most. No, our focus right now is to figure out how to dislodge those cruisers. And what I want to know is how those ships manage to survive the full force of TF Whiskey without a scratch. Any ideas?"

 _"Yes sir. We in fact, actually do know how the Covenant managed to accomplish that,"_ al-Cygni admitted.

She called forth an image of a single battlecruiser, one that Spaatz recognized as target 1-Delta, the ship the _Kilkis_ and the _Salamis_ had been tasked with to destroy. Al-Cygni pressed a button and zoomed in on the ship's dorsal hull, specifically on the same structures Spaatz had noticed prior to opening fire.

 _"These structures attached to this ship are Covenant shield generators(3),"_ al-Cygni reported, and suddenly Spaatz realized why they had seemed so familiar _. "We've seen them in the past before: the Covenant generally use them to protect their ground installations whenever they set up a main operating base during their ground invasions, though this is the first time we've ever seen them installed on a ship before in this manner, as they would be redundant. We believe the Covenant were using these generators to supercharge the shields on_ **all** _of their cruisers, a sort of overshield if you will, similar to what Elites have been observed using in ground invasions and ship boarding actions."_

Spaatz frowned as he called forth an image of the battlecruiser in question he had captured himself during the battle. The use of extra shield generators would help explain some of the Covenant's actions, but not all of them. "This ship doesn't appear to have any extra power generators installed, nor did sensors registered any additional power sources aboard that ship."

 _"That is correct sir."_

"Then where the hell did the Covenant get all their extra power from?" Spaatz demanded to know. "Those extra shield generators would have required an absurd amount of power, especially if they were providing coverage for all four cruisers. That sort of power would require... an external source at the very least."

 _"You are correct in that regard sir, the power requirements for such an activity would exceed that which the ship's onboard reactors would have been able to supply, especially if they also wished to fire their weapons. Which is probably why we've never seen the Covenant utilize such a tactic before in the past. As for the answer to your question as to where they obtained their extra power from, well..."_ al-Cygni trailed off and glanced at her counterparts.

"What," Spaatz demanded.

 _"We think the Covenant obtain their extra power from us,"_ al-Cygni delicately said.

"'Us?'" Spaatz echoed.

 _"The UNSC,"_ al-Cygni clarified.

Spaatz resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration. "Okay Captain, I'm going to need you to use your words and explain that one to me. What do you _mean_ the UNSC was providing power to the Covenant?"

 _"To clarify sir, we weren't doing it deliberately, however that is where the Covenant were obtaining their extra power: from Actium,"_ al-Cygni began. _"Sir, in order to land troops onto the surface, the Covenant had to destroy Byzas Station. They obviously accomplished this by boarding the station and destroying it within. However, they had also deployed fighters down to the surface to take out the station's ground based generator, Orbital Defense Generator E-109. Despite our best attempts, the Covenant was on the verge of knocking the station offline when they abruptly called off their attack to go after other targets of opportunity. Because that abort order occurred roughly at the same time Byzas Station was destroyed, we initially assumed it was because their mission of disabling the ODP had been accomplished, but now we believe the Covenant had realized they could use the generator for their own benefit."_

Spaatz stared blankly at al-Cygni. "Commander, are you telling me the Covenant managed to HACK into our power grid!?"

 _"In a manner of speaking, yes sir."_

"And we didn't even notice!?"

 _"To be honest sir, we didn't even realize it was possible sir,"_ Kendrick interjected. _"Covenant technology is radically different from ours, and we didn't think their tech and our tech was remotely compatible. Now that we are aware there is a work around, we can take steps to ensure such an event never occurs again. But that's more for the long term sir,"_ he hastily added.

 _"It's probably why the Covenant cruisers barely moved at all during the battle sir,"_ Harper pointed out. _"Whatever they had jury rigged to make this work was probably too fragile to move around."_

Spaatz couldn't help but sigh. This was so ridiculous, he could hardly believe what he was hearing. "Okay, how do we deal with the situation now? Can we turn the generator off?"

 _"We can and we have sir,"_ al-Cygni replied. _"However, the Covenant's capacitors are more than likely already charged to full capacity. While all that extra power will probably only allow them to survive one more attack, based on the results of our last attack..."_

"We would probably lose the rest of our ships in the process if we were to attempt another offensive," Spaatz finished. He sighed again. "Okay. So, attacking is out of the question. Alternative solutions?"

 _"Well, we believe the key is target 1-Delta,"_ Kendrick explained. _"Of the four cruisers, 1-Delta is the only ship with the extra hardware installed, so we believe that ship is providing shields for the rest of the cruisers. If we can take that ship out, the rest of the cruisers will be left with only their personal shields to protect themselves. While they are still formidable, there's no denying that our ships are at least capable of disabling them."_

 _"Actually Colonel Kendrick, ONI believes it may actually do more than that,"_ al-Cygni interrupted.

Spaatz raised an eyebrow. "How so Captain?"

 _"Full disclaimer sir: this conclusion requires a lot of speculation on our part due to our general inability to actually test our hypothesis, but based on anecdotal evidence from our field operatives, we believe the conclusion to be sound."_

Spaatz gestured for al-Cygni to continue.

 _"I won't bore you with the science behind it sir, but essentially the way energy shields work is by generating a field of energized particles vibrating at an extremely high frequency in order to dissipate the kinetic energy of high velocity objects or in the case of plasma, disrupt the electromagnetic field that allows plasma to retain its shape."_

 _"In order for a shield to properly provide coverage to an object, the harmonic frequencies of both the shield and the object in question need to resonate properly. That's actually been one of the reasons why ONI hasn't been able to replicate Covenant shield technology despite two decades worth of research. That, and attempting to create an appropriate sized power source, though that's neither here nor there."_

 _"It's because of that harmonic frequency that makes layering shields rather difficult, as they have a tendency to cancel each other out. The issue would only be compounded when providing coverage for an object or objects with extremely large surface areas, such as ships."_

"And this applies to our purposes... how?" Spaatz enquired.

 _"Essentially sir, it is ONI's belief that while that overshield is in effect, those cruisers won't, and can't, have their own shields active."_

Spaatz was intrigued. "So, what you're saying Captain, is that if we were to destroy the overshield, the rest of the cruisers would be defenseless?"

 _"Not exactly,"_ al-Cygni corrected. _"There's nothing physically stopping the Covenant from reactivating their shields once that overshield is removed, though it would take them a few minutes to fully reactivate. During that time though, the only thing protecting the ships would be their hull armor. But comparatively speaking, Covenant armor has always been significantly weaker than what the UNSC generally fields."_

Spaatz sat back in his seat, deep in thought. "So all we need to do is destroy target 1-Delta and the rest of the dominos will fall?" he asked.

 _"It would be a very small window of opportunity, but it would exist, yes sir."_

"Of course, that raises the question as to _how_ we can destroy that ship." Spaatz glanced at each of his individual chiefs. "Any ideas."

 _"Sir, I might have something that'll be able to help you with that."_

Spaatz jerked upright as the holographic image of an unknown man wearing the uniform of a UNSC Army officer suddenly appeared in his briefing room. "What the... SECURITY! KANIN, WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?"

Kanin instantly appeared by his side, his long rabbit ears drooping in embarrassment and a perturbed look on his face. "Apologies sir, but my security protocols were overridden by someone with higher security clearance than I."

He finished with a slight inclination of his paws in the stranger's direction. Spaatz glared at the man.

"This is a top secret, level 10 mission debrief," Spaatz began. "Identify yourself, **NOW**!"

The man held up both his hands to show he was unarmed. _"Apologies, Admiral. My name is Major Den Volkov of the UNSC Army's Special Warfare Group Three."_

 _"And sir? I believe I have a solution to your current predicament."_

* * *

Major Den Volkov is an original character of my own creation. For those of you who have read _Missing in Action,_ you might remember him as the officer in charge of Moss' squad for most of the story. In case it hasn't been made clear yet, the events of this chapter (and of the next two) will tie in directly with _Missing in Action._

So now you guys get to see how the Covenant capital ships were able to survive being bombarded by so much firepower. Despite my best efforts, I'll be the first to say the solution _was_ kind of deus ex-machina-ish, and I kind of wish I had been able to think of another solution, but this was the best I could come up with. Hopeful it at least seems somewhat plausible within the established rules of the Halo Universe.

Footnotes

1\. As per Missing in Action chapter 1, an Actium day is about 36 hours long (35.5 hours to be exact.)

2\. Technically the Marine Corps intelligence agency should have a representative in this meeting, as well as the one in chapter 8. There isn't one, mainly because when writing chapter 8, I forgot the USMC actually does have their own intelligence gathering department, so I didn't think to include them. Going forward, I'm probably not going to be including the UNSCMC in these meetings, mainly just to stay consistent, and partially because I just don't want to introduce another character like that just yet. Just know there should be one more intelligence chief, there just isn't (for whatever reason.)

3\. Covenant shield generators are from the RTS game: _Halo Wars_. I don't believe they've appeared anywhere else.

4\. About 7,200 soldiers is actually roughly how many soldiers I envision the 222nd Airborne Division as having at the end of the Newsaka Campaign and just before their arrival on Actium. (For any readers who didn't have a chance to read my other story, or simply don't remember, the 222nd Airborne Division is from _Missing in Action._ It's the parent division of the main characters. The 222nd Airborne Division is a non-canon Army division that's my personal creation and not based on any current or historic real-world unit.)

Now, 7200 soldiers may seem like a huge unit (and admittedly, it kind of is: as a frame of reference, the 101st Airborne Division dropped exactly 6,928 paratroopers on D-Day during the Invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944) but try to keep in mind, only about half of those soldiers would actually be a combat trooper (infantry, artillery, sappers, etc.) The rest would be rear echelon, logistical, support soldiers who, while theoretically would be able to fight as infantrymen in a pinch, would not be as effective as actual combat soldiers.

Some of my readers might be wondering where I derived that number from: the numbers and the structure of the UNSC Army divisions is based on the way the US Army divisions were organized after the 2013 reforms, with elements derived from the late 2015 reforms. What that means is:

\- The basic building block of the UNSC Army is the **Brigade Combat Team** , or simply, **BCT**. Comprised of anywhere between 4400 to 4700 soldiers depending on type, a single BCT will be composed of: 1x brigade headquarters company, 3x maneuver battalions, 1x cavalry reconnaissance battalion/squadron, 1x artillery battalion, 1x engineer/special troops battalion, and 1x support/logistical battalion.

So, to summarize: 1x Brigade = 7x Battalions.

\- Going one step up to the **Division**. A single division, no matter the type (armored, cavalry, infantry, airborne, etc.) will consist of: 3x Maneuver BCTs, 1x Field Artillery Brigade, 1x Combat Aviation Brigade (consisting of stuff like Falcons, Sparrowhawks, etc.,) and 1x Sustainment Brigade (basically, more logistical troops.) That means, an UNSC Army division will consisted of about 30,000 soldiers.

So: 1x Division = 6x Brigades

\- Next step on the ladder will be the **Corps**. A UNSC Army corps will consist of: 3x Maneuver divisions, 1x artillery group (consisting of corps level artillery and air defense artillery,) 1x Sustainment Group, and at least one independent maneuver brigade combat team.

1x Corps = 3x Divisions, 1x BCT, 1x Artillery Group, and 1x Sustainment Group

\- After corps, would be a **Field Army**. Field armies would generally consist of 3x Corps.

\- Field Armies in turn would belong to an **Army Group**. Army Groups, unlike everything before it, would not have any set numbers, and their subordinate units would vary depending on the situation. Above the army group would be a **Unified Combat Command,** which is based around a geographic region of a planet. Following that would be a **Planetary Defense Command,** then a **FLEETCOM Sector,** etc. etc.

Obviously, everything I just mentioned is under ideal situations. However, during the Covenant War and the Insurrection, things fluctuated a lot as losses mounted and entire planets were lost. Some units get bigger, others become smaller (as mentioned in chapter 15, for example, the 53rd Armored Division was supposed to actual consist of **4** maneuver brigades, as opposed to the standard 3.)

(I realize everything I've just said is really confusing, and I've probably lost a lot of people, so here's the quick rundown of military units.)

From smallest to biggest:

Soldier (1x human being)

Team (2x soldiers)

Fireteam (2x teams)

Squad (2x fireteams)

Platoon (4x Squads)

Company (4x Platoons)

Battalion (5x Companies)

Brigade (7x Battalions)

Division (6x Brigades)

Corps

Field Army

Army Group

(Note: there are actually a whole ton more units that aren't listed here, like Troop, Battery, Squadron, and Group, but their usage and size depends on the type of unit in question. And this thing is complicate enough as it is, so I'm not going to bother explaining what any of those are here.)

There is, however, one last unit I do want to talk about, mainly because it has shown up not only in my stores, but also in Halo canon. And that unit is the **regiment.**

(This will only deal with how I see the regiment is used in the UNSC Army, not the UNSC Marine Corps, because the UNSCMC uses an entirely different structure from the Army and would thus require its own, separate write-up.)

First off, a regiment in the UNSC Army is not a front-line military formation, but simply an administrative unit. Because of the enormous size of the UNSC Army, recruits are drawn from a wide variety of planets, moons, satellites, and space stations. While virtually all of the human occupied celestial bodies have been terraformed to allow human habitation, terraforming is not perfect in the sense that the terraforming technology is incapable of changing certain things about a colony. For example, the physical properties of the celestial body (which determines the gravity of the planet,) the location of the colony within the system (which can affect overall temperature of the planet,) the speed at which the planet/moon orbits around its star (which determines the length of the year,) or even the speed the planet rotates around on its axis (which determines the length of the day.)

Because of the varying characteristics of each colony, military recruits too may vary depending on the location of where they were born and raised. A recruit from the colony of Titan in the Sol System, for example, may be more accumulated to the cold as opposed to a recruit from the colony of Mars due to Titan's distance from the Sun, resulting for an overall lower average temperature. A recruit from Newsaka may prove to be potentially stronger than a recruit from Actium due to the former's stronger gravity. A recruit who was raised on a space station in orbit around Reach may prove to be more mechanically inclined as opposed to a recruit born and raised in the farmlands of Harvest due to exposure.

As a result of these fluctuating physical characteristics, as well as to ensure a greater diversity in terms of knowledge and experience, military units are generally composed of recruits from a wide range of locations. As part of that initiative, the regiment was reintroduced as an administrative unit in charge of the recruitment and training of military recruits from a specific area, on a specific colony. Upon graduating from basic training, the newly minted soldiers are assigned to one of the regiment's battalions, which in turn are assigned to one of the main brigade combat teams of the UNSC Army scattered across the galaxy.

The amount of battalions assigned to a regiment varies depending on unit type (infantry, artillery, aviation, etc.) however as a general rule, a single regiment will consist of at least nine battalions, all of which will be assigned to different brigades. How many regiments are assigned to each colony also varies and is entirely dependent on the population density of the colony in question. For example, the colony of New Llanelli is a rather small and sparsely populated colony and as a result, only has a handful of regiments assigned to the planet. In contrast, the colony of Reach has thousands of regiments, and of all separate types.

The regimental system not only applies to the UNSC Army, but also to the Army component of the Colonial Militia. But whereas the UNSCA draws their recruits from across the galaxy, individual Colonial Militia Armies draw their recruits from their own colony. As a result, while CMAs are organized in a similar way to the UNSCA, with brigades being the basic building block, occasionally an entire CMA regiment will fight together as one unit. This, however, has only occurred infrequently in the past, and only in the event of an emergency (such as when the colony is being invaded.)

However, this systematic approach to the regimental system only works best during times of peace. With humanity as a whole steadily losing ground to the Covenant, the loss of multiple colonies, coupled with heavy casualties, resulted in a number of regiments combining together to form new units. The 131st Engineer Battalion (from MIA) is one such unit, being a conglomerate of three separate, outer colony regiments (the 13th and 31st Engineer Regiments from Mamore and the 100th Engineer Regiment from Arcadia.)

Furthermore, due to the way the UNSCA individual replacement policy worked, new soldiers often found themselves being assigned to a unit "based on the needs of the Army," as opposed to assignments based on their geographical origins. (Most notably, Moss and his squad mate Clifton Roer, both inner colonist, were assigned to an outer colony unit.)

Note that this system does not apply to the various Provincial Militia Armies as, unlike the Colonial Militias, the PMs fall under the command of the individual colonial governments and not the UNSC. As a result, Provincial Militias have a tendency to be less uniformed in their structure, as their size is dependent on the amount of funding the individual colonial authorities wish to allocate to their various PMs.

Something to note about that. Prior to the start of the 2490's, the Colonial Militia had once belonged to the Colonial Military Administration, as opposed to the UNSC. However, at the start of the Insurrection Wars, that rapidly changed. Due to a number of high profile defections of military personnel to the Insurgency (including one incident in where eighty percent of the chiefs of staff of what was then the Alluvion Colonial Militia defected to the Insurgency, thus forming the basis of what would later become known as the "Alluvion Defense Force,") starting in the 2940's, the CMA was rapidly made defunct, with the organization formally dissolving in 2525.

In the meantime, the various services branches of the various Colonial Militias began to revert to their appropriate UNSC branch (i.e., militia armies were turned over to the UNSC Army, militia navies were turned over to the UNSC Navy, etc.) at which point, attempts were made to train the militias up to UNSC standards.

However, despite the UNSC's best efforts, even twenty years after the mergers, the various colonial militia groups were still at varying degrees of proficiency (for example, the Actium Militia was noted to be highly professional and competent to the point they were easily interchangeable with active duty UNSC military formations. In contrast, the Reach Militia was, as observed by one UNSC staff officer in his review, "a good example of what a bad example of a militia should be.") (With that in mind, it should be taken into account the higher concentration of permanent UNSC military installations on Reach as opposed to Actium, so a case could be made that having a professional militia on Reach would simply be redundant.)

Generally speaking though, the various Colonial Militias were generally used as replacements for the units that had once made up the UNSC's reserve components. Prior and during the early days of the Insurrection, all UNSC service branches were composed of two main components: active duty and reserves (the 222nd Airborne Division was an Army Reserve division for example.) However, with the Covenant invasion, all reserve units were called up to active duty service, leaving the UNSC without any reserves in the event of an emergency. With the acquisition of all assets from the CMA however, the militia groups were re-tasked to assume the duties of the UNSC reserves where their poor training and general lack of cohesion would prove to be less of a detriment.

 **(Many thanks to my editor, Darkfire7881 for helping me make this last part _some what_ coherent.)**


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18**

 **UNSC** _ **Kilkis**_ **, High Orbit, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
1115**

 **Spaatz**

Spaatz agitatedly lowered the files he'd been handed.

"And who the hell are you again?" he demanded to know, not caring about how rude he sounded.

The other man that had appeared next to Volkov snapped to attention.

 _"Lieutenant Commander Stephen Luzader sir, ONI Prowler Corps and captain of the UNSC_ Moonlight Sonata _,"_ the man rattled off. _"Hull classification number PRO-41673."_

He started to say something else, but Spaatz cut him off by lifting his index finger. He glanced at Kanin, who subtly shook his head: no ship by that name or hull number appeared in the registration, or the records. Which meant whatever Major Volkov and Commander Luzader had been up to, it had been kept off the books. And Spaatz _hated_ being left in the dark.

He glanced at al-Cygni. "Did you know about this?" he demanded.

 _"No sir,"_ al-Cygni replied with a shake of her head.

"And why the hell not? You're the head of the local ONI branch. Aren't you supposed to know everything your department is doing in your AO?"

 _"Commander Luzader here reports to Section Three sir, while I'm with Section One. Section Three answers directly to Admiral Parangosky, and no one else sir. Commander Luzader was under no obligation to inform me of his presence here in the system,"_ al-Cygni reported, her voice sounding strained, and Spaatz could tell she was just as unhappy about this development as he was.

Spaatz snorted. "You guys ever consider this is the reason why no one trust ONI?" he asked out loud as he started pacing the room. "Your departments won't even talk to each _other_ , much less anyone else."

Both al-Cygni and Luzader remained silent, more than likely picking up on the rhetorical nature of Spaatz's comment.

Spaatz abruptly paused in his pacing to glance at Harper. "And what about you Colonel? Did you know about this or do the departments in INSCOM not talk to each other either?"

 _"Special Warfare Group Three is a subdivision of Army Special Operations Command sir,_ not _Intelligence and Security,"_ Harper corrected, sounding completely unruffled. _"With that being said, both commands do attempt to operate in concert, so yes sir, I was made aware of Major Volkov's presence in the Ambracian System."_

Spaatz glared at him. "And you didn't think to inform me?"

To Spaatz's annoyance, Harper looked completely unrepentant. _"With all due respect sir, you didn't have the security clearance to know."_

Spaatz gaped at him. "I am a four star admiral in charge of an entire military system and in command of one of the strongest military forces in the entirety of UNSC controlled space! How do **I** not have security clearance!?"

 _"Simply put sir, you weren't 'in the know.'"_

That temporarily put a stop to Spaatz's rant. The "need to know" aspect of security clearance was just another layer of security, a way to compartmentalize classified information. Not everyone with security clearance had access to everything, just the things they "needed to know" for their job. That way, in event someone's credentials were ever compromised, a hacker or foreign agent would only have access to that one particular individual's files, as opposed to being able to compromise the entire system.

Spaatz understood the thinking, and normally he would have agreed with it. But under the circumstances...

"I think I would have needed to know there was a team of highly trained special forces operatives running operations in my area of responsibility," Spaatz bellowed. "It might have altered my plans, wouldn't you agree _Colonel_!?"

 _"Perhaps. But you know just as well as I do sir, that's up to the Security Council, not me,"_ Harper calmly pointed out.

That answer didn't really mollify Spaatz in any way shape or form, but since there was nothing inaccurate about Harper's statement, Spaatz found he couldn't retort. So instead, he busied himself with the files Volkov had handed to him.

"And who's the fucking moron who decided to name this program after a bunch of ancient warriors, whose entire reputation has been vastly overblown by popular media and pop culture(1)?" Spaatz exclaimed.

There was a silent cough that caught Spaatz's attention and turned around to see Kendrick leaning forward in his seat.

 _"Sir, with all due respect, I think we're losing focus of the topic at hand,"_ he began. _"I'm sure the 'Spartan' name was chosen at random, and not necessarily indicative of the organization's capabilities."_

Spaatz abruptly stopped him before he could continue. "Did _you_ know about them Colonel!?"

Kendrick visibly bit back a sigh. _"No sir. But then again, that doesn't really fall under the purview of the Air Force. While the Army is focused on destroying the Insurgency, the Marine Corps on developing homegrown technology, and the Navy on unlocking the mysteries of the Covenant, the Air Force has been exploring... alternative avenues of research."_

The mysterious way Kendrick said that last part gave Spaatz pause and he immediately called to mind the classified program General Carter had worked on for most of her military career, and he couldn't help but wonder if they were somehow related. He knew better than to ask though. While AFIC didn't possess ONI's casually ruthless reputation, that's not to say they weren't dangerous in their own right.

 _"Furthermore sir,"_ Kendrick continued while Spaatz was distracted. _"Even if I had known about these Spartans, I have to ask: would it matter now?"_

Spaatz sighed. Truth be told, it ultimately didn't matter if he didn't know this information five hours ago or even five minutes ago, what mattered is that he was aware of it _now_. And as much as he would have liked to continue ranting and raving like an ensign fresh out of the academy whining about how he hadn't been saluted by the ship's master chief petty officer, he had other priorities to worry about.

"What exactly do you do Major Volkov," Spaatz finally asked, noticing, out of the corner of his eye, the man in question snapping to attention. "I've never heard of Special Warfare Group Three."

 _"It's a joint military special operations unit under Army control sir, though despite what Colonel Harper stated, we actual report directly to SPECWARCOM(2), not ASOC(3),"_ Volkov smoothly replied. _"We're tasked with missions that one individual branch would not be able to accomplish by themselves. Most of our assets are drawn from within the Army itself, however often times we work in conjunction with other elements: local law enforcement, Colonial Militia armored units, Air Force CAS and security elements, or in this case,"_ Volkov nodded at Luzader, _"Navy operatives."_

"But according to these files you've given me, most of your support units have yet to arrive in system," Spaatz noted as he flipped through the documents. "In fact, if I've read this correctly, it would seem your ground team consists of a grand total of... three operators."

 _"That is correct sir."_

Spaatz raised an eyebrow. "Then, forgive me Major, but I fail to see how three... Spartans," he said the name with a bit of distaste, "could hope to destroy an entire battlecruiser by themselves."

 _"Without going into too many details sir, I would like to point out, that is not without precedent,"_ Volkov noted. _"And furthermore sir, on a more personal note, if you had seen what these Spartans have done, there would be no doubt in your mind of their capabilities."_

Spaatz frowned. "So, you've worked with these Spartans before, have you?"

 _"Yes sir. We've run a couple of counterinsurgency operations in the past with their assistance."_

The mention of counterinsurgency operations abruptly rang a bell in Spaatz's mind. Wasn't there some sort of scandal involving Army special forces committing war crimes on an Innie held world a few years ago? He specifically remembered a Lieutenant Colonel Volk or Vulcan being involved. Was it possible this was the same man?

Of course, Spaatz couldn't remember. Truth be told, once the war against the Covenant had truly begun in earnest, he had simply stopping paying any heed to the Insurgency. In fact, he had almost forgotten they were even still a thing.

Shaking his head, Spaatz turned his attention back to the topic at hand. Three soldiers destroying an entire battlecruiser by themselves? Seemed unlikely. But then again, it had been his experience most officers wouldn't dare make such a bold claim without at least some evidence to support it. Oh sure, officers, like all soldiers, enjoyed embellishing their accomplishments every now and then, but nothing to this degree, which made Spaatz _slightly_ more inclined to believe it.

But still, three men? Or more specifically, two men and one woman? That didn't seem likely.

Spaatz glanced at his intelligence chiefs. "Well? Thoughts? Opinions? I'm open to suggestions."

 _"Sir, I'm free to admit that this is not the first time I've ever heard of Spartans before,"_ al-Cygni began. _"I'm also free to admit that I've even read some of their low clearance after-action reports. Without delving too deeply, there was nothing in those reports that would lead me to believe Major Volkov's team would be anything but_ _ **successful**_ _."_

She sat back and Kendrick quickly took her place.

" _Sir, I hate to be the one to point this out, but whether or not Major Volkov is accurate in his assessment of his team is irrelevant to the topic at hand. The truth of the matter is, we don't have a lot of other options,_ " Kendrick pointed out. _"And while I don't want to minimize the personal risk for the operatives involved, in the grand scheme of things, utilizing these Spartans is the only option that possesses the lowest amount of risk to our forces, while offering the highest rewards."_

Spaatz nodded in acknowledgement, then glanced at Harper.

" _Personally sir, I'm more concerned about the execution of the plan,"_ Harper stated. _"Major Volkov has given us a rough outline involving his team boarding the target and destroying it from within with a tactical nuke, however he hasn't explained how his team will be able to even make it aboard the target in the first place. Commander Luzader, will the stealth capabilities of your ship allow you to approach undetected?"_

Spaatz glanced at Luzader, who grimaced.

 _"I'm afraid not sirs,"_ Luzader admitted. _"While the_ Sonata _is equipped with the latest stealth technology, those still work best from afar. If we were to close that distance, the likelihood of detection by the Covenant would increase exponentially with every kilometer we advanced. Maybe more, given there is nothing but dead space between us and Covenant positions. In order for us to maximize our stealth capabilities, we would need background clutter such as other ships or even debris to help mask our approach."_

Harper nodded, as if that was what he expected. " _Furthermore, even if you could approach undetected, there's still the question as to how you would even be able to pass through the shield in order to get on the ship's hull,"_ he pointed out. _"You would need the fleet to disable the shield...but if we could do that, we wouldn't need your team Major Volkov."_

 _"Certainly seems to be a true Catch-22,"_ Kendrick agreed. _"We need your team to destroy that ship to disable their shield so that the fleet can advance, but in order for your team to board, we need that shield disabled."_

 _"That's not entirely true sir. As I'm sure you're well aware, in order to fire their weapons, Covenant ships need to temporarily disable their own shields,"_ Volkov retorted. _"We can easily exploit that window, and have done so in past."_

" _Yes, but that would require the Covenant to actually be shooting at something with their main batteries: an enemy warship,_ " al-Cygni noted. _"And, correct me if I'm wrong Admiral, but the fleet can't afford any more losses."_

In response, Spaatz glanced at Kanin, who immediately spoke up.

"This is true sirs," Kanin began. "Given the strength of the opposition, if the fleet were to suffer from anymore losses, the ability of the Navy to conduct future offensive operations would be greatly diminished."

Volkov opened his mouth, as if to say something, but before he could get a word in, Kanin continued.

"However sirs, I would like to note, that only applies to **warship** losses."

There was a slight moment of silence as everyone in the room took a moment to consider what Kanin was implying. Kendrick was the first to speak.

 _"'Warship losses,'"_ Kendrick echoed out loud. _"Commander Kanin, are you implying that we could... utilize_ fighters?"

" _I doubt our fighters would present enough of a threat to the Covenant they would be interested in engaging with their main batteries,"_ al-Cygni said.

"Which is why I am not thinking of utilizing fighters ma'am, but Longsword gunships," Kanin corrected.

Kendrick immediately looked thoughtful. _"Longswords. Yeah, I suppose that could work. I know the Air Force has recently acquired a large amount of 'C709' variant Longswords, and have been heavily upgrading them – mainly, increasing their firepower in order to act as miniature 'gunships' that could be used to escort their aircraft carriers."_

"Exactly, sir," Kanin replied with a nod. "Several squadrons have been equipped with 'min-MACs,' while others have been converted to fire Archer anti-ship missiles in lieu of the standard ASGM-10s, for more effective use against Covenant warships. Because of that, it is my belief that they could be utilized for this mission."

"Now, to be clear sirs, I'm not stating our gunships have the capability to destroy anything heavier than a Covenant corvette," Kanin continued, "however, given the amount of gunships in our possession, the Covenant would be forced to engage with all available weapon systems. Furthermore, the amount of ships attacking at the same time would greatly aid in masking Commander Luzader's stealth approaching to the cruisers."

 _"But wouldn't the Covenant merely counter with fighters?"_ al-Cygni asked.

"Not unless the Longswords were escorted by fighters of their own."

 _"Won't the fleet_ need _those fighters?"_

"Not necessarily," Spaatz commented. "Gold Group had just successfully demonstrated that carriers make for rather viable anti-aircraft platforms, though, not indefinitely. However for our purposes, it would be long enough."

Spaatz climbed to his feet and called forward an image of the Covenant fleet, enlarging it so that all that were present could see it. "I'm liking your idea Kanin, however the major issue I'm seeing is that we need to make sure the Covenant don't realize what our intentions are, otherwise they may increase security surrounding target 1-Delta and greatly increasing the risk to Major Volkov's ground team, this... Argon Team."

 _"And how would we do that sir?"_

"By feinting an attack on target 1-Echo." Spaatz pointed at his display. "If we have our fighters skim along Actium's atmosphere and approach the Covenant invasion fleet from below, we can make it seem as though we're attempting to attack the ships where they would potentially be the weakest: around the gravity lift. The Covenant would be required to respond, and if some stray shots were to 'accidently' strike target 1-Delta, it's doubtful the Covenant would even notice."

Spaatz glanced at Luzader, who nodded.

 _"That could be arranged sir,"_ he said. _"We are equipped with a number of booster frames that could be modified for a stealth approach. It could also provide useful as a vehicle for extract."_

"Kanin, see to it that Commander Luzader has whatever he needs to modify his team's equipment," Spaatz immediately ordered.

"Aye aye sir."

Kendrick suddenly held up his hand. _"I'm sorry sir, I don't mean to backtrack, but: does TF Whiskey actually have enough fighters and gunships to present a credible threat to the Covenant?"_

"Probably not," Spaatz admitted. "Which is why we'll be drawing a number of resources from JTF Byzas; with the UNSC _Canberra_ crippled and most of their assigned assets destroyed, the task force has all been annihilated. What's left of their assets will be folded into TF Whiskey."

 _"Those pilots have been fighting non-stop for hours now sir,"_ Kendrick pointed out. _"They may not be happy about being thrown into the fight once more."_

Spaatz couldn't help but shrug. "Unfortunately, they don't have a choice: the longer we delay, the worse the situation on the ground becomes. We have to attack. Now."

 **XXXXX**

 **High Orbit, Actium**

 **Zelda**

"We're doing _WHAT_!?"

 _"We're launching an attack on those Covenant cruisers,"_ Bellum repeated.

Wishing at the moment his cockpit was pressurized so he could take his helmet off and vigorously rub his eyes, Zelda reached up and rapped the palms of his hands against his helmet instead.

"No no, I heard you the first time Bellum," Zelda finally said. "It's just… _what?_ "

He heard Bellum sigh. _"What exactly do you want me to say Zelda? These were the orders that were given to me, so these are the orders that I'm giving to you. I don't the make the decisions around here!"_

"Well, technically you do, 'cause you're the squadron commander," Zelda couldn't help but point out.

"But I get what you're saying," he hastily added before Bellum could blow up. "It's just: what…"

 _"Hey Skeeter, are we sure this is the same guy who launched a suicidal, one-man attack against a Covenant destroyer a couple of hours ago?"_ Zelda heard Odessa commenting to one of their squad mates.

"Hey! That was a different situation entirely!" Zelda protested. "That was against a destroyer that had been completely fucked and was seconds away from falling apart. Seriously, someone could have sneezed just a bit too hard and the ship would have blown up. All I did was just finish the job."

 _"Oh really..."_

"Don't fucking 'oh really' me," Zelda snapped. "Notice how I was still the one to get the fucking kill so fuck you guys, I'm still a better pilot than all of you. No, this is a different story. All of you were busy trying to get gas, so maybe you weren't watching, but I was: an entire fucking Navy armada tried to attack those cruisers. I'm talking like, literally, eight fucking battleships. And they got their asses kicked! And they didn't even leave a scratch on those damn cruisers! What does Command think **we** can do!?"

 _"_ _ **We**_ _, aren't doing anything._ _ **We**_ _aren't taking the lead on this one Zelda; the gunships are,"_ Bellum told him. _"All we're doing is providing cover for them."_

"You mean like escorts?"

 _"Yeah."_

Zelda couldn't decide if that was better, or worse.

"Well... why's it got to be us?" he protested.

He reflexively jerked back as Bellum unexpected exploded.

 _"I don't fucking know Zelda! Maybe they think, gunships and fighters, much smaller than warships so we can't get hit as easily!? Do I look like fucking Admiral Spaatz to you!? I don't know don't know how the fucking man thinks!"_

A slightly stunned silence followed in Bellum's tirade, and Zelda couldn't help but warily glance in the direction of her bird, floating several dozen meters away. Despite her call sign, Bellum wasn't exactly prone to outburst like that, especially over the radio.

"Um... I just meant: why are they pulling fighters from JTF Byzas instead of anywhere else," Zelda cautiously commented after a moment of awkward silence. "We're not exactly in tiptop shape at the moment."

Bellum fell silent for a moment. _"Oh..."_

"Yeah..."

 _"Um...that's probably because it would take too long to call in squadrons from the other side of the planet,"_ Bellum awkwardly noted. _"The longer we wait, the longer the Covenant have time to fortify their defenses. Something like that."_

"That...makes sense I guess," Zelda slowly said, not wanting to push Bellum any further.

" _Yeah,"_ she replied, and Zelda could almost hear the embarrassment in her voice, but then she cleared her throat and it was suddenly gone, and Bellum was all business again.

" _Anyways, we got our assignment,"_ she declared. _"We're linking up with Bayonet Squadron and providing escort to the gunships of the 327th. The commander of Bayonet, Lieutenant Colonel Yaipan, aka Bayonet Leader, will be in charge. Just a warning guys: Colonel Yaipan is a lot stricter than I am so Zelda, don't act like a dumbass."_

"What? Why do I get singled out!?" Zelda protested over the sound of his squad mates' giggles, though that was more out of habit than any sort of real offense. He of course had no intention of doing anything stupid: he didn't recognize this Colonel Yaipan, which meant he was from some other fighter wing entirely, and the last thing Zelda wanted to do was make Bellum look bad in front of her supervisors.

" _Do you really need to ask?"_ Bellum dryly commented.

Zelda pretended to think about it for a moment. "Probably not."

 _"Yeah, that's what I thought. Anyways, us combined with Bayonet and the 327th, we've been designated as Assault Wing 55. Everyone got that? Okay then, follow me, we need to go rendezvous with the rest of our assault wing."_

She banked and Zelda quickly followed in her wake as she led them down towards the planet where, what looked like just about every single Air Force Longsword gunship assigned to the system was gathering. It was an impressive display of firepower, with hundreds and hundreds of gunships spanning the horizon, and hundreds more Broadsword fighters mixed in, but Zelda wondered if it was going to be enough. Covenant cruisers were not easy targets to take on, even under the best of circumstances. Zelda couldn't help but morbidly wonder how much of the assembled mass in front of him would actually make it through this attack.

A navpoint suddenly appeared over one wing in particular.

 _"Bayonet Leader to Omega Flight: is that you on approach?"_ someone abruptly asked over the radio.

" _This is Omega-1: copy that Leader,"_ he heard Bellum reply.

 _"Glad you could join us Omega. Omega, I'm having my guys cover the formation from the sides; take up position and provide cover from below."_

 _"Copy. Moving now."_

Bellum angled her Broadsword downwards and they slowly flew past the rest of the formation and slipped into formation. As they did, Zelda glanced around to get an idea of just how many ships made up their wing. Based on what he was seeing, there were nine Broadswords from Bayonet, as well as three gunships from the No 327 Gunship Squadron: two PGE type gunships and one PGM. Combined with the six fighters from Omega, they were a decent sized assault wing, though obviously against the Covenant, numbers didn't account for much.

In terms of firepower though, they were much better equipped. Aside from all the explosives the Broadswords were carrying, all Air Force Longsword gunships were equipped with their standard M9109 ASW/AC 50mm autocannons. The main different between the two models were their main armament, but even then it was pretty good: PGE models were armed with two Archer pods with thirty missiles apiece, not including reloads, while PGM models were armed with Mark 2457 'mini-MACs,' the only Air Force ship to do so. The combination of all three gunships presented a large amount of anti-ship weapons, which made sense given their objective, but despite all that, Zelda could only hope it would be enough.

 _"All pilots, listen up."_

Yaipan's voice sounded over the radio as soon as Zelda and his squadron slipped into position.

 _"For those of you who don't know me,"_ he began, _"my name is Lieutenant Colonel Juan Yaipan, call sign: Birddog. I'm in charge of this assault wing, so pay attention."_

 _"We're launching an attack on the Covenant cruiser, designated as target 1-Echo, which is currently hooked up to that gravity lift and raining all sorts of hell on our boys down on the surface. We can't let that continue. Navy just tried to knock them out of orbit, but they got their asses kicked, so now it's the Air Force's turn. Covies probably aren't expecting an attack so soon after the first one, so we got to move hard and fast."_

 _"We're going to try and hit that cruiser from the bottom, about where that gravity lift is. Hopefully the shields will be weakest there. As the gunships have most of the weapons that can penetrate a ship of that size, Broadsword pilots, our job is to make sure these gunships survive, no matter the cost. Don't worry about enemy fighters, we got some Navy Longswords with us who will deal with them. Just focus on the gunships. Is that clear?"_

"Got it," Zelda muttered along with everyone else.

 _"All craft, punch in afterburners and follow me!"_

Zelda was shoved back into his seat as he activated his engines. All around him, the rest of the task force followed suit.

As they headed in the direction of the Covenant, Zelda took a deep breath as he felt his heart rate begin to pick up speed as adrenaline started flooding his veins once more. Closing his eyes and concentrating solely on the sound of the blood pulsing through his ears, Zelda tried to mentally prepare himself to dive headfirst into the fighting again, but it wasn't easy. Though he would never admit it, he was getting tired. It was hard to believe that this battle, at least for him, had only begun two, two and a half hours ago. At this point, it almost felt like an entire lifetime. And they had lost a lot too. Aside from Betros, Omegas 4, 7, 9, 10, and 11 had all been killed. And that was just one fighter squadron. Zelda didn't even want to know how many casualties the rest of the fleet combined had taken, because he knew it was a lot. Hopefully this attack would succeed and they could end this now but, truth be told, Zelda wasn't feeling very optimistic.

 _"We're picking up in bound fighters."_

Birddog's voice cut through Zelda's thoughts and his eyes snapped open. He automatically glanced at his HUD and spotted the cloud of red dots headed in their direction. He mentally sighed. Here they go again.

"Here we go gents!" Zelda bellowed into the radio with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. Hey, he might have been tired, but he had a reputation to maintain.

It seemed to work as he immediately heard a sigh over the radio.

 _"Leave it to Zelda to still be enthusiastic about this shit,"_ he heard Odessa complain.

"Hey, I'm just saying: I still got a shit ton of ordnance, and a lot of targets to expend it on."

 _"Calm down Zelda, you know our objective: stay close to the gunships,"_ Bellum ordered. _"I'm sure you'll get your chance to throw yourself into another dogfight but for now, let's let the Navy take over."_

"I can technically do both you know," Zelda pointed out. "You know I'm like a god damn sniper with my missiles; don't even need to get close, I can take out the Covenant from a distance without even breaking formation."

 _"No Zelda."_

 _"Longswords are breaking away,"_ Birddog suddenly announced.

Zelda glanced at his HUD to see all Longswords, Navy and Air Force, breaking away from the formation and speeding straight towards the incoming fighters.

"Go get them little friends," Zelda muttered under his breath.

The two sides rushed at each before, at several hundred kilometers away, they both open fired. Missiles and plasma flew through the void as UNSC and Covenant forces found themselves locked in mortal combat once more. Under normal circumstances, Zelda would have been watching the battle as it unfolded, waiting to see where he would need to go to best reinforce the line. But since he was confined to escort duty at the moment, he settled for ignoring the battle raging in distance, preferring to focus on what was going on directly around him. Besides, he'd seen enough dogfighting to know how the battle would go down. At this point, he was realizing there wasn't a whole lot of opportunity for too many variations in the way combat worked in space.

With the Navy keeping the Covenant fighters distracted, Zelda and the rest of the Air Force ships were able to slip past the Covenant's outermost layer of defense, however that just meant they immediately ran into the Covenant's second layer of defense.

 _"Light cruisers and heavy corvettes, dead ahead!"_ someone warned over the radio.

"Copy, I got eyes on!" Zelda reported as his HUD lit up with new contacts. Outside, he could see at least five separate corvettes and two light cruisers on approach.

 _"All Broadswords, maintain formation,"_ Birddog ordered. _"All gunships, you're cleared to engage enemy warships!"_

 _"Copy that Leader! PGM-777 moving to engage!"_

Above him, Zelda watch as one of the gunships pulled ahead of the main wing. Lights began to glow across its entire hull as the ship began charging up its MAC. The light cruiser saw the PGM-777's charging up and started to take evasive actions but before it could get far, there was a giant flash of light as the gunship fired, sending a hundred metric ton shell of depleted uranium in the cruiser's direction at a little over twelve thousand kilometers per second.

The shell smashed into the cruiser, causing its shields to light up, and the cruiser quickly retaliated, firing a couple of plasma torpedoes at the gunship. The torpedoes came streaking in their direction, but being only a little over twice the size of a Longsword, PGM-777 didn't present a large enough magnetic signature for the torpedoes to lock onto, causing them to miss entirely. The Covenant cruiser started to deploy its plasma cannons, but before it could, PGM-777 fired again.

Zelda blinked as the cruiser's shields disappeared in a bright flash, leaving the ship reeling. As the Covenant struggled to recover, the wing's other two gunships moved into position.

 _"PGEs 117 and 222, move to engage!"_

Both gunships just opened up with everything they had. Missile after missile was launched at the cruiser, who, as expected, started to shoot the first few down when PGM-777 fired again, sending a MAC round skimming along the full length of the cruiser's dorsal hull and destroying the plasma turrets located there. Then the missiles hit, striking at various points across the entire ship. Fire erupted from the ship's hull and in the shadow of one of the explosions, Zelda noticed the silhouette of a number of fighters shooting out from the cruiser's hanger, even as his HUD let out a shrill of alarm.

 _"They're launching Banshees!"_ Zelda heard Odessa warn.

 _"All gunships, continue focusing fire on that cruiser!"_ Birddog immediately commanded. _"Broadswords, standby to engage, but don't break formation! Let the Banshees come to us!"_

Zelda gritted his teeth as he waited for the Banshees to come in range. He always hated being the one to sit still as it gave up one of the greatest advantages a fighter had: their maneuverability. He supposed Birddog was concerned about a flight of enemy fighters sneaking in and hitting the gunships from behind if the Broadswords were to break formation, but this felt a little extreme.

 _"Here they come,"_ someone warned as the Banshees got to within firing range. _"They're firing fuel rods! INCOMING!"_

 _"All pilots, evade!"_

"Chaff," Zelda spat out as he threw his fighter into a spin. It turned out to be a rather pointless exercise as none of the fuel rods had actually been aimed at him, and instead were all aimed at the gunships, who quickly dodged out of the way.

 _"Broadswords, return fire!"_

Quickly dropping his crosshairs over one of the approaching Banshees, Zelda armed a Medusa and tapped the trigger.

"Fox one," he called out in a rather bored tone and watched as the missile rocket towards the Banshee.

The Banshee in question executed a rather tight turn as Zelda's missile approached, and managed to blow the missile out of the sky with his plasma cannons, but Zelda hadn't been the only one to fire at him. The Banshee pilot quickly found himself confronted with another three Medusas and rather than try, and potentially fail, to shoot down all three, the Banshee ignited his boosters and took off running, trying his best to evade the incoming.

 _"Bayonet Squadron, break formation and pursue! Omega, continue onward to the objective!"_

 _"5 and 6, move up to cover the left flank,"_ Bellum immediately ordered as all the fighters from Bayonet broke formation. _"3 and 8, cover the right!"_

 _"Copy, moving!"_ Odessa immediately replied.

Zelda moved his fighter into the new position and watched as two Bayonet fighters take off in pursuit of the Banshee Zelda had been shooting at.

 _"11, watch your space, we still got Banshees all over the place!"_ Zelda heard the pilots say.

 _"Copy that 9, I got your back!"_

 _"I got you, you little motherfucker! FOX ONE!"_

 _"Target destroyed, good shot 9! Hang on, I'm picking up two Banshees closing in from our nine o'clock, high!"_

 _"Break right and draw them away from the gunships!"_

 _"Copy!"_

The Broadswords abruptly disappeared from Zelda's radar, though from the sounds of it, the pilots had everything under control so he wasn't worried. He glanced back at the light cruiser the gunships were fighting, only to see another assault wing had joined in on the melee, and the ship was quickly turning into one giant, flaming wreck.

 _"PGM-777 to Omega Leader, target destroyed, requesting permission to proceed onward to the objective?"_

 _"Granted! We've got your back covered!"_

 _"Copy!"_

Zelda watch as the engines on the gunships flare and they began speeding through open space in the direction of the Covenant cruisers, and he quickly pushed down on his stick to match their speed. But before they could reach -

 _"Head's up! Incoming Covenant destroyer, fifty seven degrees from above!"_

Zelda glanced up to see the hulking form of a Covenant RPV-class light destroyer lumbering towards them on an intercept course.

 _"We can't let that thing get behind us!"_ Bellum declared. _"All ships, divert to heading five niner six three! Take that ship head on!"_

"On you Leader!" Zelda yelled as he banked.

The massive form of the destroyer quickly filled his windshield as he speed towards the ship. He could see energy beginning to swell up on the warship's dorsal hull before the ship abruptly launched three plasma torpedoes in their direction.

 _"INCOMING INCOMING INCOMING!"_

Zelda hastily jerked his fighter out of the way as a plasma torpedo passed through the space between his fighter and Odessa's fighter, doing nothing but damage to Zelda's nerves. At the same time, PGM-777 began firing back.

 _ **WHOMP!**_

Waves rippled across the destroyer's shield as the shell hit them dead on, and even from this distance, Zelda could see the plasma turrets on the destroyer swiveling in the direction of the gunship.

"Covies are trying to get a lock on triple seven!" Zelda warned.

 _"That ship is the only thing that can disable the destroyer's shields! Don't let it get taken out!"_

"Well, what the fuck do you want me to do it about?" Zelda muttered to himself.

 _"6, on me, we'll cut in front of the gunship and see if we can't distract those turrets!_ " Odessa yelled.

"Well that sounds like a terrible idea," Zelda noted, even as he followed Odessa as they jerked out in front of 777, barely managing to avoid getting hit in the back by friendly fire as the gunship fired its MAC again. Plasma immediately can streaking in.

 _"Evade, EVADE!"_

"What do you think I'm doing!?"

Zelda threw himself into a loop as the bolts flooded the area around him. Clearly they had managed to fool the targeting sensors on the Covenant turrets, but Zelda knew it was only temporary. Even now, he could see the turrets swiveling back to the gunship.

"777, take evasive action!" Zelda roared.

There was a flash of light and for a moment, in his slightly exhausted mind, Zelda thought he had somehow been hit. But then he blinked, he realized that no, the flash actually came from outside. Glancing over at the destroyer, he noticed the turrets swiveling around as they were set upon by two different UNSC assault wings, both approaching from different directions.

 _"Target's being assaulted by AG15 and AG31,"_ Bellum reported. _"We need to go in support them. All pilots, attack!"_

Zelda immediately banked and headed straight for the destroyer. In front of him, he could see Assault Wing 15 exchanging fire with the destroyer at a rapid pace. They were similar in composition to Zelda's wing only, they had one extra gunship assigned to them. Unfortunately, that little bit of added extra firepower wasn't helping them very much as AG15 was getting their butts kicked. In the distance, he could see one of their gunships fire a volley of missiles and then immediately pull away. As the missiles slammed into the destroyer's shield, causing them to flicker, the Covenant turrets swung around and despite the gunship's best attempts, they were still struck by at least three bolts, destroying them instantly. Due to their small size, gunships did not have a whole lot of armor.

 _"That shield is about to give way!"_ Bellum reported over the radio. _"All it needs is one more volley! All ships of AG55: concentrate fire on this navpoint! Standby!"_

Zelda nimbly reached out and armed one of his ASGM-10 anti-ship missiles.

 _"FIRE!"_

"Fox three!" Zelda warned as he pulled the trigger. He watched as his missile joined all the others as everyone in wing fired at the same time.

The MAC round from PGM-777 struck first, causing the shield to ripple from the impact. Then the missiles struck, hitting the shield all at the same time.

At first, Zelda thought nothing happened and was preparing to arm another ASGM, when the shield abruptly flickered and disappeared, and then his sensors indicated the destroyer was now open to attack.

"Shield is down!" Zelda reported.

 _"Omegas 3 and 8, follow me in, we'll take out those dorsal turrets. 5, 6, and 11, escort the gunships in and take out their engines!"_ Bellum commanded.

 _"Copy. Gunships, you lead the way, we'll follow up the rear!"_ Odessa yelled.

 _"Understood!"_

Zelda sped towards the destroyer, approaching from the direct rear, with the gunships in the van. Immediately they began taking fire as the destroyer detected their approach. The gunships started bobbing up and down to try and evade, and Zelda could see them getting silhouetted by all the explosions. But the destroyer was only able to fire off a few bolts before Bellum and her flight came roaring in and fired a series of Medusas at the turrets, taking them out.

 _"This is PGM-777,"_ the gunship reported as the stream of plasma fire halted, giving the gunships a clear shot. _"Target locked... shot out!"_

777 fired, destroying the armored housing surrounding the destroyer's engines with a single shot, leaving them exposed. Seconds later, half a dozen Archer missiles hit home. One of the engines completely erupted into flames. Chunks of metal were hurtled at high speeds as the engine began ripping itself apart, causing the blue glow to disappear.

The effects were almost instantaneous. Even for a ship as large as a destroyer, they still needed both engines to be able to maintain a straight flight pattern. With one engine down and one still active, the destroyer immediately began making a slow turn to the left. Given a bit more time, the Covenant crew would easily be able to correct that turn, but Zelda had no intention of letting them do that.

 _"12, on me!"_ Odessa barked. _"We'll roll in, take out the remaining engine! Zelda, cover!"_

Zelda watched as Odessa and Skeeter roll to the right and he waited a couple of seconds before following suit. As all three of then sped towards the destroyer, Zelda could see the bomb bays on both Odessa and Skeeter opening up, and a missile from each fighter popped out.

 _"Fox one!"_ Odessa called out, and he and Skeeter fired, then immediately broke away.

Following close behind, Zelda glanced over his shoulder to see the two missiles closing in on the remaining engine. They disappeared behind the lip of the engine before, seconds later, there was another explosion and the other engine died.

"Main engines are down!" Zelda reported.

 _"Copy!"_

Being in space, the destruction of the destroyer's main engines didn't mean the destroyer suddenly stopped moving; with no atmosphere, there was no drag or friction, so there was nothing to stop the heavy warship from continuing to move forward. But with the main engines down, it did mean the warship wasn't going anywhere fast.

 _"AG-55, reform on me!"_ Bellum commanded. _"We got to take out that ship's other weapons!"_

 _"Ship is rotating!"_ Skeeter abruptly warned.

Zelda glanced over at the warship to see the crew was firing their side mounted maneuvering thrusters, trying to spin the ship on its axis so they could bring the turrets mounted on their ventral hull to bear. But before they could get into position, the thruster exploded as it was struck by a missile and Zelda glanced around to see yet _another_ gunship wing vectoring in for an attack.

 _"AG-27 is beginning their attack on the target,"_ Odessa reported.

"Oh, hell no! They're trying to steal our kill!" Zelda complained.

 _"'Our kill?'"_ Odessa echoed. _"You do realize that destroyer is far from dead, right? Going to take a lot more than four assault wings to take that ship down."_

"Then what are we waiting for? Let's get back in this shit," Zelda impatiently said.

 _"PGEs 117 and 222, move in and take out all plasma and pulse laser turrets on the destroyer's dorsal hull,"_ Bellum ordered. _"AG-27 is going for the ship's main battery. We're going to clear the way for them. 5, 6, and 12, follow them in!"_

"Rog!"

The wing banked and headed for underside of the destroyer. As they drew near, Zelda began to see red holographic circles appearing over the turrets there as the PGEs began obtaining locks. The turrets turned in their direction and started shooting, causing Zelda to yank his stick to the side as he started dodging. The fire wasn't very accurate, and seemed rather uncoordinated as some of the fighters and gunships were taking more fire than the others, which made Zelda wonder if the destroyer's central fire control director had been taken out, but the sheer volume of fire more than made up for the inaccuracy.

Zelda winced as the plasma started exploding closer and closer to his fighter, forcing him to fly even more erratically than he normally would have, but fortunately the good thing about missiles was that, unlike MACs, they didn't require a clear line of sight to be accurate.

 _"Target locked, missiles away!"_ he heard the gunships reported. _"Breaking off!"_

Over two dozen Archers left their tubes on the gunships and headed for the destroyer, each one vectoring in on their own target. The turrets quickly switched targets, shooting at the incoming missiles, blowing some up, but inevitably some of them made it through.

Explosions ripped through the turrets, destroying some of them, but not all. However, the amount of debris that got thrown into the air created a small cloud, temporarily obscuring the sights of the surviving turrets and forcing them to wait for it to clear. But in that moment of inactivity, that was when AG-27 began their attack run.

 _"Bombs away, bombs away, bombs away!"_ Zelda heard them call out as an entire squadron, twelve Broadswords total, swooped by and just began dumping munition after munition onto the destroyer.

Turrets were shredded, armor was sheared off, and holes were punched clean through the hull as the bombs and missiles exploded. Fires started flaring up, all of which were instantly extinguished by the vacuum of space, only to immediately return due to the amount of oxygen and combustible material that was leaking from the ship. A number of run lights on the destroyer's hull started flickering, some of which turned back on after a moment, but most went dark and stayed dark. It was clear the ship had been heavily damaged, if not outright disabled.

 _"Good shit Wing 27,"_ Bellum exclaimed.

" _Yeah boi!"_

A new navpoint suddenly appeared on Zelda's HUD.

" _All pilots of AG-55, reform on me!"_ he heard Birddog demand and Zelda automatically moved to obey. As he did, he glanced behind him, only to see all the Air Force gunships, not just the ones in his wing, were peeling away from the Covenant destroyer, leaving it crippled but still alive.

"Hang on," Zelda protested. "That destroy ain't dead yet! We're not just going to leave it there, are we?"

" _All its weapons, engines, and shields have been taken out, making it pretty much defenseless against us,"_ Bellum explained. _"At this point, it's going to take the Covenant a lot more time and effort to get that ship back to operational status than it would if we were to simply destroy it."_

Zelda grunted in acknowledgement even as he sped in the direction of the objective. The massive bulk of the Covenant cruisers loomed in the distance. Promptly they opened fire.

" _Head's up, we're taking fire!"_

" _All pilots, evasive maneuvers!"_

Zelda quickly jerked his plane to the left, then immediately banked to the right, trying to keep his fighter moving. The distance, coupled with his fighters small size meant he wasn't the easiest of targets to hit, but it was still possible. Case in point, the light of an explosion caught his attention and he glanced to his left to see a Broadsword from another assault wing take a direct hit and explode, leaving nothing left.

" _All pilots, be advised, I have eyes on the target,"_ Birddog reported, and Zelda glanced forward. Directly in front of him was a single battlecruiser. Just behind it was the Covenant heavy cruiser.

Zooming in, Zelda spotted the gravity lift that connected the cruiser to the surface of Actium, sprawled out below them. At this range, the gravity lift appeared to be nothing more than a pencil thin beam of purple light, but it was there.

" _All gunships, lock onto the target and standby to engage,"_ Birddog barked. _"Fire."_

All around Zelda, every single gunship, not just in his wing but every wing, opened up on the target. Dozens of MAC shells, hundreds of Archers, and thousands of rounds of heavy autocannon fire streaked towards the cruiser.

The results were pretty much what anyone would have expected: every single round was stopped thousands of meters away from even coming close to the ship's hull by a massive energy shield.

" _All units, keep firing!"_

Shells continued to pepper the Covenant's shields. If they were doing damage though, Zelda couldn't tell as there were no fluctuations, no flickering, or even ripples in the shields.

" _Bayonet Leader, this is Flanker Leader, be advised, enemy fighters have broken through the Navy's line and are pushing our six!"_

" _Shit, we can't let those fighters reinforce the cruiser! Alright, Bayonet, Rogue, Flanker, Tornado, Gold, Stiletto, and Havoc Squadrons, break away and engage those fighters. Hold them back! Everyone else, continue the advance!"_

Zelda watched as almost half the Broadsword fighters broke away, leaving all the gunships, most of the Wombats, and a handful of Broadswords to continue the attack.

"What the fuck Bellum," Zelda complained. "We should be there with helping them hold back the fighters. What fucking good are we doing here?"

" _Shut up and do your damn job! Omega, spread out! We got a lot more gunships to cover, and not a lot of fighters, so spread out!"_

Shaking his head in annoyance, Zelda nevertheless did as he was told. He followed Odessa to the right as they flew away from the trio of gunships Bellum and Skeeter were covering. All the while, the gunships continued to rain fire down on the Covenant cruisers.

" _Keep firing, keep firing!"_

" – _running low on missiles here…"_

" _This is PGM-197, I'm hit!"_

" _227, pull in and cover that spot!"_

" _Are we even scratching those shields?"_

That's what Zelda wanted to know. Despite all the shells and missiles the gunships had already expended, the shields didn't even look like they were losing energy. Not even close. And while they continued to advance, the Covenant in the meantime, continued to fire every single weapon system they had in response.

" _WARNING, INCOMING TORPEDOES."_

Zelda jerked his fighter to the left just a couple of torpedoes pass through the space he had just been occupying. Glancing back, he watched as one slam into a gunship that just wasn't fast enough to dodge out of the way. The torpedo consumed the entire ship, completely atomizing it. At the same time, the forward energy projector on the battlecruiser closest to them flashed, and a beam of energy sliced through the void, cutting through an entire assault wing at the same time.

Zelda swore. All around him, ships were dropping like flies. The entire assaulting force had already taken dozens of casualties and yet, they essentially had yet to accomplish a damn thing!

" _Zelda, arm an ASGM and standby to fire on my mark,"_ Odessa abruptly ordered.

"What am I aiming at?"

A navpoint appeared on his HUD.

" _Let's try and take out that energy projector,"_ Odessa said.

Zelda blinked. "Well, have you noticed the shields are still up?"

" _You know those shields fluctuate every time the Covenant fire their main battery, right? I've had a program running and I think I've got the timing down! And we should be close enough to be able to take advantage of that!"_

"Well, good for you, but that just seems like –"

" _ZELDA!"_

"Fine!" Zelda snapped as he armed a missile. "Ready on your mark."

" _Fox three, MARK!"_

Zelda pulled the trigger. A missile departed from the bottom of his Broadsword and he watched as it streak towards the cruiser in question, following closely behind the missile Odessa fired.

Just as the two were about to hit the cruiser's shield, the shield abruptly flickered for just barely a second as the ship fired its energy projector, and suddenly the missiles were on the other side of the shields heading straight for the target. Zelda reflexively leaned in and watched as the missiles sped towards the energy projector but just as they were about to hit –

 _FWOOZ FWOOZ FWOOZ!_

\- pulse laser turrets came to life, blowing up both missiles before they could hit.

" _Shit,"_ he heard Odessa mutter.

" _5, this is Leader. That you lobbing missiles in the direction of the objective?"_

" _Rog, but it didn't connect. Pulse turrets got them both."_

" _Might need more missiles to punch through. Calculate another time, and we'll get the rest of Omega and Green Wing to fire at the same time."_

Zelda frowned at the idea of using the Wombats for something like this, but he nonetheless armed another ASGM and got ready to fire again.

" _All fighters, standby to fire on my mark,"_ Odessa announced over the radio. _"And… MARK!"_

Zelda pulled the trigger again. This time, nearly a dozen missiles were simultaneous fired. They reached the shield just as the cruiser fired off a series of torpedoes. Despite this, not all the missiles were able to make it through; about a third detonated against the shield and Zelda couldn't help but roll his eyes. Most of those had come from the area the Wombats had been gathered, which is exactly what Zelda had feared. He didn't know why, but despite all their processing power, he noticed that Wombats sometimes didn't have the same reaction time as a human pilot. Or, apparently, the same aim: Zelda was pretty sure he saw three missiles not even headed for the right ship!

Ignoring the stray shots, Zelda tried to focus on the missiles that were on course, but then a series of plasma bolts fired in his direction forced him to divert. They struck a nearby gunship instead, which violently exploded forcing Zelda to break away to try and avoid the debris thrown in his direction. As he navigated through the explosion, he could hear Odessa saying:

" _Dammit. Just missed the edge of the surface."_

" _Calculate another timing, everyone should still have at least one more ASGM – "_

A message abruptly flashed across Zelda's screen. Distracted as he was, it took him a moment to realize what it said:

" _ALL FIGHTERS, BREAK CONTACT AND FALL BACK."_

"Omega-6 to Omega Leader, be advised I'm getting a retreat order from Command," Zelda said out as he recovered his fighter. "Can you confirm?"

" _Confirmed! I'm picking it up too! Omega Leader to all craft, break off the attack! I say again, break off the attack!"_

"Fucking shit!" Zelda spat out as he sharply banked to the left to turn around and start heading back in the direction he had come from. Plasma fire streaked by just above and below his fighter, but fortunately he was able to avoid getting hit.

Looking back though, Zelda could see not everyone was so lucky. He could see one gunship getting hit in one of its engines, throwing the vehicle into a spin, one that the crew wasn't able to recover from before it was hit several more times, destroying it completely.

Checking his HUD, Zelda could see that only about half of the gunships and fighters that had started off this attack were still left.

"God dammit," he snapped to himself. "Fucking knew this shit was going to happen!"

" _Bayonet Leader to Omega Leader, head's up, we couldn't hold all the fighters back! You've got incoming!"_

Zelda's head snapped up as his HUD lit up with the signature of several squadrons' worth of fighters coming straight at them.

" _Shit. All craft, listen up! We're not out of the woods just yet! Looks like if we want to survive this, we're going to have to fight our way through! All fighters, accelerate to attack speed! Draw their fire away from the gunships!"_

Zelda swore again as he started arming weapons. As he worked though, he couldn't help but wonder what the point of this entire attack was. Aside from the destruction of a couple of warships, they really didn't accomplish much and in fact, probably suffered from more losses in terms of overall tonnage than the Covenant did. If Zelda didn't know better, he would have almost thought this attack was a distraction of some sorts. But the question was:

A distraction for what?

 **XXXXX**

 **UNSC** _ **Moonlight Sonata**_

 **Lieutenant Commander Stephen Luzader**

"Captain? We're receiving a message."

Commander Luzader looked up from his display. "Put it on screen," he ordered.

"It's a text message only sir," his communications officer informed him.

"Put it up anyway."

"Aye sir."

The main screen, which had been displaying the fight that was unfolding outside suddenly flickered, before going black. In its place, a series of words began to scrawl across the screen.

…

 **INFILTRATION SUCCESSFUL.**

…

That was all that appeared.

Luzader felt his breath catch in his throat, and he did his best to remain calm. Those were the exact words he'd been hoping to see.

Soft footsteps filled his ears and he turned his head slightly to see his Army counterpart, Major Volkov, coming to a parade rest stance beside him. Slowly turning his head towards him, Luzader raised an eyebrow. Without looking away from the words on the screen in front of him, Luzader saw Volkov giving a single nod.

Nodding to himself, Luzader activated his keyboard and began typing out a single, worded response.

 **...**

 _ **EXECUTE.**_

* * *

1\. There's an interesting thread on the Ask Historians community of Reddit that asks the question of whether or not the reputation of the Spartans in modern media is truly justified or not. The answer is not really a cut and dry yes or no, but it does point out some of the things the general populace accepts as truth is actually not, or has been heavily embellished in the thousand or so years since the ancient city state of Sparta existed.

Now, me personally, I'm rather indifferent to whether or not the Ancient Spartans are worth of admiration or not, but I thought the entire thing was interesting enough to bring up.

r/AskHistorians/comments/6rvusy/is_the_military_worship_of_the_spartans_really/

2\. SPECWARCOM: Special Warfare Command. This is a canon UNSC command.

3\. ASOC: Army Special Operations Command. This is not a canon UNSC command. It is, however, the name for the modern day United States Army command in charge of all Army special operational units (I.E., the Army Special Forces, 75th Ranger Regiment, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, aka, "Night Stalkers" etc.)

4\. As mentioned in the chapter itself, all the Air Force gunships are supposed to be "C709" variants of the GA-TL1 Longswords, which are primarily used by the UNSC Navy, but I don't think it's impossible for the Air Force to have a couple of squadron's worth of those fighters themselves.

Their designations of **PGE** and **PGM** are based on how the US Navy designated their patrol boats (though instead of gunboats, the Air Force calls them gunships):

PGE = Patrol gunship, escort (anti-aircraft)

PGM = Patrol gunship, MAC (anti-ship)


	19. Chapter 19

Author's Note:

The chapter this week is going to be a little different from all the other chapters so far. I know, I say that all the time, but this time I actually mean it. As was kind of hinted at, at the end of chapter 18, this week's chapter will take place from the perspective of a Spartan.

I'll be honest, I generally don't like writing about Spartans, mostly because I think it's been covered really well, not just in the games, the official novels, and just about every piece of media concerning the Halo universe, but also in fanfiction itself. Don't get me wrong, it is to be expect because the Spartans are essentially the center of the Halo universe, and the games are awesome because of that, I just don't personally care to write about them myself, mainly because I don't think there's much to add anymore; every idea or concept I would personally want to see in a story about Spartans has already been done by writers and artist _far_ more talented than I.

With that being said, I noticed past-me had setup an opportunity in this story to have a chapter from the perspective of a Spartan, so I decided to take it and try my hand at depicting how I envision Spartans in action to be. Compared to their forms in other media, my Spartans are a little understated, but I hope they still appear as the cold, efficient, killing machines like they are in the games.

Oh, and part of the chapter takes place from the perspective of the Covenant, specifically a Covenant Jackal. The reasons for the Covenant perspective is twofold: I thought it would be fun to try and depict events unfolding from the eyes of the enemy and also, I feel like for Spartans, you always need a contrast to emphasis just how _good_ the Spartans are. The only way to achieve that contrast, especially in the scenario I had set up, was from a Covenant perspective.

* * *

 **Chapter 19**

 **Covenant Battlecruiser "1-Delta"  
May 6, 2545  
1130**

 **Argon Team**

 _ **EXECUTE**_ _._

The holographic word flashed across her HUD for about half a second before disappearing just as quickly as it had appeared, but Petty Officer Second Class Maria-062 barely gave it any heed as she was more concerned about the heavy footsteps approaching her team's position. Covenant patrol. Four Grunts and an Elite, probably a Minor. Based on how loudly the Grunts were squabbling, it was most likely a random patrol, but one that still needed to be dealt with quickly, and quietly.

Maria glanced back at her team stacked up behind her and hurriedly, using hand signals only, informed them of her plan. Two green lights in her visor lit up, indicating her team had acknowledged and received, and Maria turned back, her muscles tense and ready for action. She would be the one to open the action and for maximum surprise, timing would be key. She waited. And listened.

 _Thump._ _ **Thump. THUMP.**_

The sound of the Elite's footsteps grew louder and louder as he got closer to their position. Maria held her breath.

Now.

Without a moment of hesitation, she launched herself around the corner and emerged right in front of an Elite Minor who was now an arm's length away. Before the astonished creature could react, Maria lashed out, driving her fist right into his throat.

Her fist slammed into his personal shield, causing them flare and absorbing much of the damage, but the blow was still enough to send the Elite staggering. As he stumbled back, reflexively gripping his neck, he tried to draw his plasma rifle from his right thigh, but Maria deftly blocked it with her hand then followed up with a fierce elbow strike to the Elite's head.

His weakened shields instantly gave way and the Elite took the full force of the impact to the side of his helmet, which crumbled under the vicious blow. His head snapped to the side and Maria quickly surged forward, firmly grabbing his head with both hands and yanking him down while at the same time, bringing her right knee straight up.

There was a loud crack as the Elite's face met her knee and, upon feeling the Elite go limp, she roughly threw him to the ground. By the time he hit the floor, she had already drawn her suppressed pistol and proceeded to calmly shoot him once in the back of the head.

Ignoring the purple blood that was beginning to pool on the deck, Maria whirled around with her sidearm at the ready, finger hovering near the trigger, but then paused when she noticed her team had already dealt with the rest of the Covenant patrol. Four Grunts laid prone on the ground. Standing over them was the rest of her team, consisting of Spartans Kai A-019 and Zalmir B-170.

Lowering her sidearm, Maria and her team stood there, still as a statue, waiting to see if their little incursion had been detected, but when no alarms started sounding and no guards manifested, they allowed themselves to relax.

Gesturing for her team to move out of the way, Maria proceeded to methodically plant a single round into the backs of all the Grunts' heads, to make sure they really were dead. It didn't make for the cleanest of stealth missions, leaving all sorts of bodies behind, but their presence aboard this vessel wouldn't remain undetected for long and Maria would rather not leave any patrols that could potentially ambush them from behind.

Quickly swapping the partially used magazine from her pistol and replacing it with a fresh one, Maria holstered her weapon before silently dropping down to one knee and carefully extracting a plasma pistol from one of the dead Grunts. She stuck the confiscated weapon to the magnetic strip on her other thigh in a position where she could easily and rapidly pull it out. With only three of them on a ship of this magnitude, Maria knew she was going to need a weapon that could quickly disable the shields of any Elites she came across.

Task complete, Maria stood back up and quickly ducked back around the corner to retrieve the package. Consisting of a single Fury tactical nuclear weapon, the nuke would be what her team would use to destroy this ship, so ensuring the package survived unharmed was crucial. Even more so than, dare she say it, the lives of her team.

Strapping the warhead to her back next to her assault rifle and drop shield and securing it, Maria glanced at her team. Being the highly trained professionals that they were, neither of them were looking at her but were instead, watching both ends of the corridor, scanning for threats. Despite their seemingly lack of attention, Maria knew they would still be listening.

"We move," she silently informed them over their designated TEAMCOM channel. "We need to isolate this ship from the rest of this fleet, and we'll accomplish that by destroying their communications array. Kai, you have point. 170, cover our six."

Two green acknowledgement lights lit up on her HUD and Maria glanced over her shoulder to see B-170 lifting his SAW ever so slightly, the only hint of his nervousness.

Good. Apprehension was to be expected, even for a Spartan, from someone who was entering a real life combat situation for the first time, but it looked like 170 had a lock on things. Maria nodded in approval before refocusing. Hefting her own weapon, she gestured with her hand.

"Move out."

 **XXXXX**

 **UNSC** _ **Moonlight Sonata**_

 **Lieutenant Commander Luzader**

"… _The timing of our attack is absolutely critical,"_ Admiral Spaatz was saying over the radio. _"Too early, and we run the risk of the fleet getting damaged by the overpressure wave from the explosion. Too late, and the Covenant will have ample time to reactive their shields. While we are of course able to penetrate the Covenant's regular shields, the time it would take to do so will result in higher casualties among the fleet, casualties I'd rather avoid."_

Luzader watched as Volkov slowly nod his head. "Of course sir. Understood."

" _Which is why I need to know the exact moment your team has extracted from the target vessel, is onboard your ship, and en route to the minimal safe distance from the explosion,"_ Spaatz continued as if Volkov hadn't said a word. _"I trust you're monitoring your team's progress?"_

Volkov subtly glanced in Luzader's direction, who in turn glanced in his communication's officer's direction, who nodded. "Naturally sir. Though, I should warn you sir, at this current moment, due to my team's need to maintain stealth, we are radio silent with them. Though that will lift the moment Target 1-Delta has been isolated from the rest of the fleet."

Spaatz grunted in acknowledgement. _"Fine. That's fine. Inform me the moment you're able to reestablish contact."_

"Of course sir."

Volkov moved to end the video call, but paused when Spaatz held up his hand. "Was there something else sir?"

" _Yes. As soon as your team has extracted, and you're free of the blast zone, report directly back to me. No one else. If this operation is successful, I have no doubt there will be other assignments that will require your team's assistance."_

Luzader could see Volkov frowning ever so slightly. "Sir, with all due respect, that's not exactly our purposes for being…" Volkov began.

" _Major, your purpose is to win this war, is it not?"_

Volkov stiffened. "Yes sir."

" _Well, just in case you haven't noticed, the war is here, in this system, right now. And I intend to win, using whatever assets I have available to me. You, Lieutenant Commander Luzader, his ship, your team, and whatever support personnel you have, have all become part of those assets. And I will use you as_ **I** _see fit. So, whatever your original purpose for being in this system was, is now irrelevant. You're under_ **my** _command. Is that clear Major?"_

Volkov hesitated. "Yes sir," he finally said. "However, I will have to inform my commanders. And they'll no doubtedly be in contact with _you_ sir."

" _Oh trust me Major, they'll be hearing from me first,"_ Spaatz dryly replied. _"Spaatz, out."_

Spaatz's image abruptly disappeared from Luzader's bridge, allowing him to finally relax.

"Man," Luzader commented as he strapped himself back into his command chair. "Spaatz _really_ doesn't like special operations, doesn't he?"

"Well, you know just as well as I do, some staff officers think that just because they wear a couple of stars on their lapels, they're entitled to know about every single detail about every single operation in existence, and get pissed off when they realize they don't have as much authority as they think they do," Volkov replied with a grunt as he stashed the communications equipment away and extended the extra seat. "Command will set him straight though. In the meantime, where are we with Argon Team?"

"Last communique we had with them, Spartan-062 indicated they had successfully eliminated a Covenant patrol without detection, and were headed directly for the ship's communications relay," Luzader reported. He handed Volkov a data pad containing the transcript of all the radio transmissions they had with Argon Team. There wasn't much on it; Luzader had noticed even under the best of times, Spartans weren't exactly the most sociable types but on a mission? Luzader had worked with some computers that were more talkative than them.

"Provided they don't run into any more patrols, I predict we should be hearing from them again in the next several minutes or so," Luzader continued.

Volkov grunted in agreement as he quickly read through the data pad. It took him a few moments to realize Luzader was still staring at him with an expectant look on his face. "What."

"You think they can pull this off?" Luzader couldn't help but ask. "This operation? Three operatives versus and an entire ship? Almost an impossible mission, you think."

Volkov snorted. "They're Spartans. To them, there's no such thing as an 'impossible' mission, only a mission with slightly more challenging obstacles."

"I realize that. And if we were talking about a team of II's, I would have agreed wholeheartedly. But these are III's we're talking about. And one of them was assigned to the team a couple of days ago. I mean, part of the reason why we're even in this system right now was for them to undergo integration training. That's going to be a huge obstacle for them, overcoming the fact they've never worked together before in the past."

"They are Spartans," Volkov repeated. "Flexibility is their strong suite. Plus, Spartan-062 is in change. Maria has been fighting in this war longer than either you or I have. She knows what she's doing, and she'll know how to make everyone else fall in line."

"Yes, but Spartan-062 is not exactly known for her leadership ability," Luzader pressed. "She's not exactly Spartan-104. Or Spartan-051. Or, hell, 117."

Volkov looked up from the data pad with a curious expression on his face. "You seem to know a _lot_ about the Spartan program. More than what a mere captain of a Prowler _should_ know," he said, the warning clear and evident in his voice.

Luzader waved his hands dismissively. "I work for a military intelligence agency," he pointed out. "Gathering intelligence and rooting out secrets is kind of what we do for a living. I'd honestly be more concerned if I encountered a captain who _didn't_ know these things. Shows he's not paying attention."

Luzader watched as Volkov raised an eyebrow, but gave no other indication of what he was thinking.

"At any case," he suddenly said. "I don't think you should worry about what our Spartans are doing Commander. If anything, I'd worry for the Covenant."

"Because they have no idea what's coming."

 **XXXXX**

 **Covenant Battlecruiser** _ **Hammer of Justice**_

 **Zek**

Kig-Yar Minor Zek's head snapped up as a warning suddenly flashed across his screen. "What the hell was that?"

His fellow security technician, another Kig-Yar by the name of Rezan, barely looked up.

"It's just bottarga(1) with a bit of garum(2) spread on top," he distractedly replied. "Are you telling me you Ruuhtians don't have that?"

Zek shot Rezan a confused look. "What?"

Rezan lifted a small can of what looked and smelled like some sort of heavily fermented meat. "Bottarga," Rezan replied, pointing at the can. "You've never had it before?"

"What? No! I mean, I have but... that's not what I'm taking about!" Zek snapped somewhat impatiently. "That alert message. Did you see that?"

"No," Rezan said around a mouthful of food. "What'd it say?"

"'External communications lost,'" Zek read out loud.

"What? That's not possible," Rezan exclaimed, causing speckles of food to spray out of his mouth and coat his display.

Zek momentarily frowned in disgust. He distracted himself by tapping a few buttons on his display.

"Are you sure it's not a computer error?" he heard Rezan asking from over his shoulder.

"That's what I'm looking for now," Zek noted as he tapped a couple of buttons and waited. "System is not registering anything. Is that even possible? Shouldn't I be getting at least an error message?"

"I don't know," Rezan admitted. "Maybe you should ask one of the Unggoy for assistance. Communications is, after all, their responsibility."

Zek didn't bother dignifying that suggestion with a response. He'd sooner be branded a heretic than ask an _Unggoy_ for aid.

He tapped a few more buttons to see if anything else showed up, but nothing happened. After a few moments of fruitless activity, he sat back in his chair and drummed his fingers against his station, thinking.

Coming to a decision, he grabbed his radio.

"What are you doing?" Rezan asked.

"I'm reporting this," Zek grimly reported.

Rezan instantly paled.

"Oh no," Zek heard him say as he hastily began cleaning off his station. Zek couldn't blame him: their commanding Sangheili could be rather terrifying.

Unfortunately, due to the way Sangheili culture worked, any warrior who was not involved in frontline combat against the heretics was considered of lesser status. However, because of the way the Covenant military structure worked, lesser races such as the Kig-Yar and Unggoy weren't allowed to operate such advanced equipment without a Sangheili officer. As such, most Sangheili assigned to a rear echelon support position saw it as punishment for unspecified crimes, and Zek's supervisor, a Sangheili Major by the name of Bal'Kamet, was no exception. With a temper hotter than Eayn's(3) sun, Kamet did everything in his power to make sure his underlings were as miserable as he was. As a result, Zek did his best to avoid the creature but in this situation, it was unavoidable: the punishment for his failure to report this incident would be much more severe.

As Zek waited for the line to connect, he took a moment to compose himself.

 _"What."_

Kamet's blunt voice instantly came through the airwaves and Zek couldn't help but wince at the shear heat in Kamet's voice already, despite not having done anything.

Zek did his best to keep calm and tone respectful as he said, "Sire Kamet? This is Security Station Salvation: we have a situation that requires your immediate attention."

 _"I'll be right there,"_ Kamet grumbled after a long pause and just as Zek was about to put down the radio he heard Kamet add, _"And Kig-Yar? This had_ _ **better**_ _be good."_

The line went dead and Zek nervously swallowed. He exchanged an apprehensive look with Rezan as the sound of heavy footsteps approached them, with both of them snapping to attention as soon as Kamet rounded the corner.

"What do you _**want**_!?" Kamet demanded.

"Sire, I regret to inform you all external communications has been lost. We no longer have any contact with the rest of the fleet," Zek reported, trying his best to remain calm. He never enjoyed being the bearer of bad news.

Unfortunately, Zek wasn't entirely successful in that regard, and rather than the calm, collected voice he'd been hoping to achieve, what came out instead was a long jumble of words.

It took a moment for Kamet to comprehend what he was being told, but when he did, Zek could see his eyes narrowing behind his helmet, a classic sign of aggravation, and Zek mentally braced himself.

"That... is impossible," Kamet growled. "What did _**you**_ incompetent Kig-Yar do!?"

"Nothing! We did nothing!" Rezan immediately and defensively protested.

Zek inwardly cringed. Now that was the wrong thing to say.

Sure enough, Zek could see Rezan shrinking as Kamet immediately turned his ire towards him.

"This ship," Kamet menacingly growled, "was built using the Ancestor's designs and blessed by the Hierarchs themselves. Are you suggesting it would suddenly and abruptly cease to function!?"

Zek could see Rezan's throat bobbing as he nervously swallowed.

"N... no sire!" Rezan managed to stammer.

"Then _**clearly**_ this is the result of something _**you**_ fools did! Pull up the security feeds! We shall see what has happened!"

It took Zek a few moments to realize Kamet was addressing him, and he hastily moved to obey.

Tapping a buttons, a holographic screen appeared, depicting the corridor just outside of the communications array. The entire corridor was filled with light gray smoke that seemed to waft from the area of the array itself, which caused Zek to frown. Had there been a fire? But how? Everything in that room was fireproof.

"What is the meaning of this!?" Kamet abruptly barked, causing Zek to jump.

Zek started to turn towards Kamet, but before he could say anything, movement on the screen caught his attention. The smoke was shifting and revealing -

Bulky green armor. An alien figure shaped like a human, but with the build and physique of a Sangheili. Carrying enough firepower to put most Mgalekgolo to shame. And finally, wearing, a dome-like helmet with a solid gold visor.

Zek could feel the saliva in his mouth dry up as he realized exactly what he was looking at.

"Demon..." he heard Rezan whisper in fearful, but almost reverent voice, and Zek couldn't blame him.

He had heard the stories. Everyone had. Of the gold faces, green skinned Demons that emerged from the dark void to take what they wanted, and not even the Covenant Empire's best warriors could stop them.

"Mothers save us," Rezan whispered again and through the corner of his eye, Zek could see Rezan making a number of hand gestures which he recognized as old Kig-Yar hand symbols for warding off evil spirits.

For his part, all Zek could do was simply sit there, frozen with fear at what he was seeing.

They watched as the Demon stalk through the corridor, like a jörmungandr(4) hunting its prey. It moved silently and swiftly down the corridor before, without warning, turned and looked directly at the camera. Zek immediately and reflexively dove for cover, only to suddenly remember it was impossible for the Demon to have seen him through the screen.

Feeling a bit foolish, Zek picked himself off the deck in time to see the Demon pointing a massive handgun at the camera before microseconds later, the screen went dark.

Numb with shock and fear at what he just seen, Zek took a moment to compose himself before slowly turning around to see how Kamet was reacting.

At first, Kamet was merely standing there, unmoving and as still as a statue. But just as Zek was about to call out his name, he noticed an odd expression creeping across Kamet's face, and it took Zek a couple of seconds to realize what it was: sheer joy. Somehow, that expression alone caused a deeper sense of dread to pass through Zek than if Kamet had been spitting mad.

"We have been boarded," Zek heard Kamet mutter. Before he could ask him to elaborate, Kamet suddenly screamed, "WE HAVE BEEN BOARDED!"

Zek exchanged a nervous look with Rezan at the sound of pure excitement in Kamet's voice. Before he could doing anything, Kamet abruptly slammed his palm onto the desk, causing Zek to jump in fright.

"Kig-Yar, sound the alarm and alert all Security Lances!" Kamet barked and Zek hastily moved to obey. "Have all warriors assemble on me; I shall deal with this incursion myself!"

 _ **"WE HAVE BEEN BOARDED!"**_

 **XXXXX**

Maria holstered her pistol and glanced at the spot where the security camera had been standing. That was sloppy: she should have spotted and disabled that camera long before it had been able to spot her. She could only hope that no one had been monitoring the screens.

 _ **EEEEEEEEEEEE!**_

The inhuman screeching of an alarm quickly put that hope to bed and Maria mentally sighed. Damn. Detection had been inevitable, especially after they had just destroyed the communications array, but she'd hoping to put it off just a bit longer. Oh well.

She turned to her team to gesture at them, but before anything could happen, a nearby door slide open, and a Jackal stepped into the corridor.

"Contact!" Maria yelled in warning, her sidearm instantly appearing in her hands

 _PFT_.

The Jackal's head snapped back, a neat hole right between his eyes but there was already another Jackal coming up behind the first one. The new Jackal reflexively raised his hand to cover his face as blood from the first Jackal splattered all over the place and Maria quickly lowered her pistol a hair and fired two rapid shots into the Jackal's chest. As the Jackal lowered his arms in surprise, Maria put a third round through his left eye while at the same time, drawing one of the plasma grenades from her back.

Activating it, she quickly tossed it through the doorway the two Jackals had emerged from and hastily shot the door controls, causing it to slam shut. She could hear the grenade exploding but at the same time, she also heard the _hiss_ of another door opening up directly behind her and whirled around in time to grab the plasma rifle that was pointed at her head with her free hand and shove it to the side, causing the initial burst to miss.

She immediately retaliated, jamming her pistol into the shooter's stomach, an Elite Minor, and emptied the rest of the magazine, hearing the Elite grunt in pain as his shields were instantly disabled and his lower torso was perforated with bullets, but Elite's didn't die that easily. As the slide on Maria's pistol locked back, the Elite threw a wild left hook with his free hand at her head, one that she was able to quickly duck under, but in doing so, was forced to release her hold on the Elite's rifle.

The Elite immediately kicked at her, shoving her back a little while at the same time, backpedaled, trying to gain some room so he could bring his rifle to bear, but he could only take a couple of steps before running into the corridor wall. In the split second he was distracted, Maria released her pistol, letting it drop to the ground with a clatter, while at the same time, grabbing her combat knife from her belt with her now free hand. Surging forward, she jammed the blade into the Elite's wrist, severing the tendons leading to the hand holding onto the rifle and forcing it to immediately go limp while at the same time, causing the plasma rifle to slip out from his hands. As the rifle fell to the ground, Maria kicked it in midair with enough force the entire thing shattered the moment it hit the bulkhead wall.

Simultaneously, Maria drove her knife forward towards the Elite, right down his forearm, the titanium carbide coated blade easily cutting through skin and flesh like it was butter, splitting the Elite's arm open like a banana and spilling blood and gore all over the place. Maria could hear the Elite screaming in pain but she ignored him as she focused on driving the blade up the Elite's entire arm, only being forced to stop when she reached the much thicker and denser part of the Elite's bicep muscle which her blade had a bit more trouble cutting through.

Undeterred, Maria ripped the knife out, slashing the Elite across his throat with the same motion. A purple line appeared across the Elite's neck for about half a second before abruptly splitting apart, and blood began _gushing_ out from the wound.

A choking noise filled the air as the Elite grabbed at his neck with one hand, while reaching for a plasma grenade on his belt with the other, so Maria hit him once more in the face for good measure, driving her elbow up and into the Elite's chin with enough force she could hear the Elite's skin tearing as his head snapped back. The Elite hit the wall and collapsed to the ground in a boneless heap, sitting in a pool of his own blood, twitching.

With the sound of fighting filling her ears, Maria had no time to rest. She sheathed her knife and threw herself forward, snagging her sidearm off the ground as she rolled passed and quickly reloaded. Coming out of her roll ready to fight once more, she glance around the corridor and immediately took stock: her entire teamwas currently engaged in their own hand to hand battles, which explained why none of them has been in a position to assist her. Kai was currently fighting against another Elite and appeared to be holding his own but Zalmir on the other hand was fighting against two Elites and appeared to be struggling. As she watched, Zalmir ducked under a vicious jab from one of the Elites, only to run right into the other Elite, who slammed his knee into Zalmir's face and sent him staggering backwards, but fortunately he was able to maintain his footing.

Upon seeing that, Maria instantly brought her pistol to bear. The shot was going to be difficult: Zalmir and the Elites were very close to each other and all parties were moving very quickly. Nevertheless, Maria took a deep breath and released it slowly, waiting for her opportunity.

There. Zalmir had just dodged a blow, leaving one of the Elite's heads exposed for a bare moment. Maria didn't hesitate.

 _PFT PFT._

She fired in rapid succession, planting a hammered pair into the Elite's face, causing him to rear back in surprise at the unexpected shots, temporarily lowering his guard. Zalmir immediately punched him in the face. Stunned, the Elite nevertheless attempted to hit back, but his punch was weak and highly telegraphed, allowing Zalmir to see it coming from a lightyear away.

Sidestepping the blow, Zalmir grabbed a hold of the Elite's outstretched arm and yanked the creature towards himself, using the Elite's own momentum against him. As the off-balanced Elite stumbled towards him, Zalmir twisted around and shoved the Elite right into the other one. The other Elite was just barely able to dodge his friend, but the half second delay he took to recover was just enough time for Zalmir to whip out his SAW and start shooting.

Maria wasn't able to see the results though because at that moment, her pistol was kicked right out from her hands by a Skirmisher that appeared out of nowhere. Rather than try to resist, Maria decided to follow through with the blow and spin around, whipping out her captured plasma pistol from her thigh as she did.

Coming out of the spin, Maria came face to face with another Skirmisher that was charging straight at her with some sort of energy cutlass. Maria didn't hesitate.

 _FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ!_

Two bolts to the chest and one bolt to the head put that Skirmisher down for good. She started to turn towards the initial Skirmisher, but a glint of something sharp caught her eye and she instinctively ducked as she turned. Moments later, an energy cutlass passed right through the space her head had just been occupying.

Seeing the Skirmisher's feet planted on the ground right in front of her, Maria dropped down even further and swung her arm as she continued her turn. The Skirmisher pitched forward with a look of surprise on his face as his legs were swept out from underneath him, but somehow he was able to throw himself forward into a somersault. Landing on his feet about a meter away, the Skirmisher whirled around to face Maria once more, only to be confronted with a wall of green as Maria full on bull-rushed him, knocking him off his feet once more.

Wrapping her arms around the Skirmisher's waist, Maria full-bodily lifted him up and toppled over backwards, twisting around in mid-air and driving the Skirmisher straight into the ground.

There was a loud _crack_ as all two thousand-ish kilograms of Maria's weight landed right on top of the Skirmisher, leaving him sprawled out on the ground at an odd angle. He didn't stir as Maria hauled herself up to her feet, but just in case _that_ wasn't enough to kill him, Maria went ahead and shot him once in the head with her plasma pistol.

 _FWOOZ!_

Snapping her weapon up, she glanced around to see if her team needed her help, but it was clear they had things under control. As she watched, Kai managed to plant the barrel of his assault shotgun under the chin of the Elite he was fighting against and fired once, blowing the Elite's head clean off. Concurrently, Zalmir was bringing the buttstock of his SAW down hard against the head of his own Elite, caving the creature's skull right in and leaving another rapidly cooling body on the floor. But the Covenant weren't done just yet. The thunderous sound of charging footsteps filled Maria's ears and she turned around to see another Lance of Covenant soldiers rounding the bend from the down corridor, and from how fresh they looked, Maria could tell it was an entirely different group from the one they had been fighting.

Maria silent cursed. They were taking too much time. The longer they wasted here, fighting these guys, the longer the Covenant would have to fortify their defenses. They had to move. Now.

But not before they dealt with these guys...

"COVER UP!" Maria barked, ripping her assault rifle off her back. Flicking the safety off and shouldering her rifle at the same time...

 _BANGBANGBANG!_

The sound of gunfire flooded the corridor as all three Spartans simply opened up with whatever weapons they had at hand. Holes were punched into the bulkheads and brass littered the ground as red hot bullets tore into the advancing Covenant.

Maria fired as rapidly as she could in semi-auto. Out of all the Spartan-IIs and even some of the III's, Maria was admittedly one of the worst shots with a rifle. But against a target less than twenty meters away down a wide open and straight corridor, Maria was essentially Linda at this point.

Covenant soldiers toppled to the floor with single holes drilled into their heads. Elite shields were disabled and their operators' killed before they could do anything. The entire Lance of soldiers was completely decimated before the first brass casing even had a chance to hit the ground.

The gunfire petered off as the last Elite toppled to the ground. Without breaking stride, Maria swapped out her magazine while checking over the corridor for more targets. The still bodies of nearly thirty Covenant soldiers littered the ground. A disappointing start, but nothing could be done about that.

"Argon Team, sound off," Maria ordered as she bent over and retrieved her discarded weapons.

Two green lights on her visor immediately lit up, indicating no one had gotten injured. In the distance, Maria could hear the sound of more footsteps and shouting as more Covenant headed in their direction. It was time to leave.

"To the objective area," Maria barked without preamble. "Double time it. Move."

They took off running.

 **XXXXX**

Zek couldn't help but tremble as the Demons disappeared from his screen. He had managed to locate a working camera that had an angle on the corridor where the Demons had been detected, and had turned it in time to see the entirety of two separate security Lance's get annihilated.

Thirty Covenant warriors. Six Sangheili, eight T'vaoans, four Ruuhtians, and twelve Unggoy. All slaughtered to the last being in less than seven minutes. All before they had been able to put up more than a token resistance. The sight had been both absolutely terrifying and heartbreaking, especially since Zek was pretty sure he knew at least one of the Ruuhtians that had been killed.

No, not killed. Slaughtered. Killed implied he had had a chance.

 _"Security Station Salvation, come in."_

Kamet's deep voice sounded over the radio and Zek quickly reached out and grabbed the mic.

"This Salvation, go ahead," Zek replied.

 _"Where are the Demons now?"_

Zek hastily checked his security feeds. "Deck Eith Mor. They appear to be heading for the bridge."

 _"Lock down the blast doors. Slow the Demons down until I can reach them."_

Zek glanced at Rezan who immediately went to work and on screen, Zek could see a number of blast doors slamming shut.

 _"Have all Security Lances prepare defenses outside of the bridge, engineering, as well as all hangers,"_ Kamet continued. _"They are to hold to the last. The Demons are to not be allowed to escape."_

"As you will Sire," Zek automatically replied. "In the meantime, should I have some Lances join you in your pursuit?"

 _"No."_

Zek paused. He honestly wasn't expecting that answer. "Sire?"

 _"Do not send me reinforcements,_ " Kamet insisted, _"for I shall need none. I will defeat the Demons. I will make the Demons regret ever boarding a ship guarded by Bal'Kamet. And no one will dare take that glory from me!"_

Zek exchanged a look with Rezan. That sounded like an absolutely terrible idea. Unfortunately, Zek knew Kamet would not be interested in such opinions and as such, all Zek could do obey.

"Yes Sire," Zek finally said with a bit of reluctance. "Deploying Security Lances."

 _"Good,"_ Kamet grunted. _"Do not fail me Kig-Yar."_

The line went dead.

Sharing one last glance of concern with Rezan, Zek switched the channels on his radio and pushed the talk button.

"All Security Lances... "

 **XXXXX**

"...fire in the hole."

The entire corridor shook as Maria thumbed the igniter, sending shards of metal scattering across the floor. Without bothering to wait for the smoke to clear, she whirled around the corner, rifle at the ready. She was immediately confronted with two Grunts struggled to climb to their feet on the other side of the blast door. Two trigger pulls later, and Maria was left trying to figure out the best way to fit through the blast hole.

The breaching charge had blown a nice square shaped hole though the blast door, but one that was only about thirty centimeters by thirty centimeters wide. Nowhere near big enough for her, even if she _wasn't_ wearing her armor. They were going to have to pry the doors open.

"Kai," she called out and out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Kai snapped to attention. "Get the door open."

Kai gave a single nod. Handing his shotgun over to Zalmir, he walked over to the door and braced himself. Grabbing a hold one of side of the hole and, while Maria and Zalmir covered him, he began forcing open the damaged door.

As she watched, Maria took a moment to consider their situation. This was the third blast door they had come across. Clearly the Covenant were doing their best to slow the Spartans down. And while the doors themselves weren't that much of an issue (Argon Team had packed enough explosives to go through all of them, having anticipated this very event,) the time it took to force their way through was of some concern to Maria. So far her team had managed to fend off every Covenant patrol they had come across without much issue, but if the Covenant were to attack in force, well, even Spartans could be taken down with enough numbers and firepower.

The loud screeching of protesting metal filled the air and Maria glanced over her shoulder to see Kai ripping the door open, leaving a gap that was just barely wide enough for them to slip through. Without saying a word, Maria slipped through the gap, with Zalmir coming up close behind her and Kai following up the rear.

The moment Kai released the door though, it released another loud shriek as it slammed shut.

Well. That was the first door to do that and that could potentially prove a problem when they needed to extract.

Unfortunately, there wasn't going to _be_ an extraction unless they could reach their objective first. And to do that, they had to fight through what was essentially the entire ship.

The problem was, due to the need for rapid speed and high mobility, Argon Team needed a nuclear weapon that was easily transported and wouldn't unduly hinder their fighting ability. The Fury tactical nuclear weapon they were carrying fulfilled all of those requirements, but because of its small size, it had a rather lackluster explosive yield. As such, while Maria would have loved to simply place the bomb in any random place aboard this ship and quickly evacuate, there was genuine concern the bomb alone wouldn't be enough to destroy a ship of this magnitude. Which is why they need to place it around something capable of creating secondary explosions like, say, the ship's main reactor.

Of course, _locating_ the reactor was a chore all in itself. Despite this many years into the war, UNSC intelligence into the internal arrangement of Covenant warships was somewhat lacking. As was to be expected, given the UNSC's ability to board an enemy ship, much less capture one intact for study.

Because of that, trying to navigate their way around the ship without any proper maps or signage was difficult. Case in point, this corridor.

Maria slowed her stride just a bit as she regarded the hall in front of her. They were reaching a four way intersection, and she wasn't sure which way she was supposed to turn. She had been navigating through the ship via an energy scanner built into her HUD, heading in the direction of where she was detecting the most energy, however at the moment she was picking up signatures from all directions. As a result, she wasn't sure which corridor she should head down and on a ship of this size, the last thing she wanted to do was accidently take the wrong turn.

Unfortunately there were no signs, or at least none that she could see, so at the moment she was stuck. Yet for some reason, something was telling her the best way to turn was right. So rather than fight the feeling, as soon as she reached the intersection, Maria took that right turn -

\- and nearly walked right into an Elite Minor who was waiting there with his plasma rifle drawn and in a low ready position. Damn creature must have been waiting in ambush because Maria had _not_ picked him off on her motion detector!

"RAHH!" the Elite bellowed as he quickly reacted, snapping his rifle up but unfortunately for him, the UNSC had yet to discover a single biological creature that had a faster reaction time than a Spartan.

Maria immediately swung her rifle, batting the Elite's weapon away with the muzzle and forcing open the Elite's guard, which she quickly exploited. Seizing the side of the Elite's head, she rammed it to the corridor wall with enough force to leave a sizable dent. As the Elite went limp, either because he was dead or unconscious, Maria became aware of a veritable firing squad of Covenant soldiers set up a couple of meters further into the corridor. Maria had just enough time to wonder what this Elite was doing so far up and in the line of fire of his comrades when her battle instincts took over and she brought her assault rifle up and started firing into the mass with one hand.

 _BANGBANGBANG!_

The front row consisted of Jackals with their arm shields active, however there were still gaps that allowed Maria's bullets to make it through. At first they didn't fire back, presumably out of fear of hitting their comrade Maria was holding onto, but as soon as one of the Grunts dropped to the floor with blood squirting out from a bullet hole in his neck, the Covenant lost any and all compunctions they may have had and just started shooting.

With absolutely no cover in the corridor, Maria was forced to use the next best thing. Hauling the Elite upright, she hefted his body in front of her, using him as a human shield of sorts while she backpedaled. All sorts of plasma struck the Elite's body, boring holes into his armor and burning his flesh, but aside from a couple of stray shots, Maria was able to avoid getting hit. She felt the bolt on her rifle lock back, so she tucked the weapon under her arm and just focused on backing up around the corner. As soon as she was clear, she released the Elite, now looking more like a lump of roast flesh than an actual body.

"Contact," she announced, somewhat unnecessarily as she reloaded.

"At least we know we're heading in the right direction," Kai noted.

Maria inclined her head in his direction in agreement as she stashed her rifle back onto her back.

"There are five Jackals in the front row providing cover," she reported, pulling out a plasma grenade and handing it over to Kai before pulling out her plasma pistol. "I'm going to hit the center one with an overcharge shot, disable his shields. 19, nail him. 170, suppressing fire... now."

Zalmir immediately stuck his SAW around the corner and held down the trigger. Fortunately his weapon had a smart-link interface so he wasn't just blindly firing. Maria waited until the return fire had slowed before rounding the corner.

Plasma pistols didn't have gun sights in the traditional sense, but Maria was still able to zero in on the Jackal in question, cowering behind his shield was it was struck by machine fire. With her hand starting to burn from the heat of the overcharge weapon, she released the trigger and hurriedly ducked back as Kai took her place and hurtled the plasma grenade down the hall.

She heard the _pop_ of an energy shield getting disabled followed by the static discharge of a plasma grenade explosion. A piece of scorched metal slid down the hall, coming to a stop in the middle of the intersection, and without another word, Maria hurtled herself around the corner and kicked off the far wall, dolphin diving to the floor and drawing her rifle as she did.

Landing heavily on her stomach, Maria took a second to take stock: Kai's aim had been flawless and he had stuck the Jackal in the center right in the head. The explosion had completely torn the Jackal apart, seriously wounded the Jackals on either side of him as well as the Grunts standing behind him, and knocked the remaining two Jackals off their feet, leaving the entire group exposed.

Shouldering her rifle, Maria started firing.

 _BANGBANG! BANGBANG!_

Her first two rounds were directed at a needler-welding Grunt. The heavy 7.62 rounds smashed into his leg just above the kneecap, tearing the leg clean off and sending the Grunt screaming to the ground.

Her next two rounds were directed at the needler itself. The first round smashed through the weapon housing while the second somehow managed to ignite the entire magazine of blamite, causing it to detonate and throw purple needles in all directions, all of which, upon connecting with living tissue, also exploded.

Ignoring the chaos that was reigning among the Covenant's ranks, Maria continued to methodically eliminate the Covenant soldiers one by one, firing burst after burst at them. Her rifle unexpectedly jammed, but all she did was calmly yank back on the charging like she was on a firing range as opposed to an active firefight, ejecting the dud round and keep on firing.

 _BANGBANG! BANGBANG!_

Maria's next few burst were directed at another Elite Minor, one who was already bleeding from a wound caused by the wild needlers. Her first burst tore his left shin to shreds and forced him to drop down to one knee whereupon Maria shot him in the neck, right about where the jugular vein on a human would have been. Bleeding heavily, the Elite nevertheless jammed a finger into the wound to try and stop the bleeding while at the same time, bring up his plasma rifle with his other hand to shoot back. He managed to fire off a couple of bolts, but Maria's position on the ground made her an extremely small target and as a result, the bolts completely missed.

But before the Elite could try again, Kai stepped around the corner, leveled his shotgun and fired a single ten gauge slug right through the Elite's mouth.

His plasma rifle dropping to the ground, the Elite knelt there, as if his body was trying to decide whether or not he was dead yet. As he stood there swaying, Maria realized she could see the other end of the corridor clear through the hole in the Elite's head, and she quickly held her fire. Moments later, the Elite's body toppled over backwards, landing on the ground with an audible _thump_.

Finishing off the rest of her magazine by systematically pumping a round into each of the Covenant's bodies to make sure they stayed down, Maria climbed to her feet, reloading as she did.

"Status?" she demanded, shoving a fresh mag into her rifle and letting the empty one fall to the ground.

A single green light representing Kai lit up on her HUD but just as she was about to enquire further, Zalmir suddenly yelled out, "CONTACT REAR!"

Maria whirled around in time to see Zalmir literally sawing a Skirmisher in half with an extended burst. Maria's rifle automatically snapped up and she fired a snap shot at a Jackal standing nearby but the Jackal was able to activate his arm shield in time to deflect the rounds.

Behind the two aliens, Maria could see more Covenant soldier climbing through the blast doors at the end of the corridor they had just come from. Somehow the Covenant had managed to force the damaged devices open, abet, just barely, allowed a steady stream of Covenant soldiers to slip through.

Maria started shooting at them but then -

"Contact twelve!" Kai warned and Maria could hear his shotgun roaring to life.

She glanced over her shoulder to see more Covenant soldiers coming down the hall towards them, though once Kai had opened fire on them, they had immediately dropped down for cover.

Taking that opportunity, Kai ducked back around the corner only to immediately reemerge with a frag grenade in hand.

"Frag out!" he yelled and hurtled the device downrange.

The corridor lit up with an explosion, wounding several Covenant soldiers, but it wasn't enough. Glancing back in Zalmir's direction, Maria could see he was just barely keeping the Covenant on his side pinned down, but his SAW was moments away from running out of ammo and once that happened, the Covenant would be able to seize the initiative and the tables would turn. They had to leave.

"Smoke out!" Maria called as she pulled out a couple smoke grenades and tossed them at her feet.

Instantly the three Spartans were covered in a cloud of black smoke. The Covenant fire immediately slackened as they temporarily lost sight of their target, but it wouldn't take long for them to reacquire it. But Maria had no intention of stick around that long.

"Fall back," she ordered, urging her team to retreat down the corridor the firing squad had been.

Things were getting a little too hot. While she had every confidence in her team's ability to eliminate both groups of Covenant that were attacking them at the moment, doing so would take time, during which more Covenant combat teams would arrive. No, Maria's team needed to figure out a way to get a lead on the Covenant. Gain some time where the Covenant weren't chasing them so they could plant the bomb and leave.

Essentially, they needed some way to temporarily disappear. The smoke helped, but unfortunately it wasn't going to be enough as the smoke would only last a few more seconds. They needed something a bit more permanent. But what?

Stumbling through the thick smoke, Maria activated her thermals to help her navigate. As she did, she happen to notice an outline of something in the corridor wall.

Why, hello.

 **XXXXX**

Zek anxiously watched as on screen, both Lances cautiously advanced on the cloud of smoke. The smoke was so thick, his cameras had trouble penetrating it, but he had enough of them he could cover the smoke from all angles. If the Demons emerged, Zek would know.

 _"Salvation Station, this is Lance Tilu."_

Zek's radio came to life as one of the T'vaoan's in charge of the Security Lances reported in.

"This is Salvation, go ahead," he replied.

 _"Are the Demons still in the smoke?"_

Zek glanced at all the screens he had assembled. He didn't see the Demons emerging from any of them.

"Affirmative," Zek replied in affirmation.

 _"Have you figure out a way to get rid of the smoke?"_

Zek glanced at Rezan, as he was the one supposed to be working on that. Rezan bobbed his head.

"Affirmative," Zek repeated.

 _"Good. On my command."_

A button appeared on his console and Zek hovered his hand over it as he watched both Lances take up firing positions.

 _"Three…two…one…GO!"_

Zek slammed his hand on the button. At once, several fans built into the ceiling came to life. They immediately sucked the smoke away to reveal -

Nothing. There was absolutely nothing. No Demons, not even a hint of them. Only the brass casing from their weapons and a whole ton of bodies to show that they were even there.

Zek stared at his screen, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. How did... what did... where did they go!?

 _"Ryökäle(5),"_ he heard the T'vaoan swear over the radio. _"Salvation, I thought you said the Demons were in the smoke!"_

"They were in the smoke!" Zek insisted.

 _"Then you are either blind or stupid you vittu(6) because they. Are. Not. THERE!"_

"I was watching the cameras the entire time! They did not leave the smoke!" Zek protested.

 _"Then where are they!?"_

"Goddess and the stars above, the stories are true! They really are Demons!" he heard Rezan wail and Zek snapped his beak at him for him to shut up as he quickly reviewed all the security footage he had.

Unfortunately, they all showed the same thing: the Demons disappeared into the smoke and never reemerged.

Zek reached for the radio, but before he could say anything, a high pitch whistling filled his radio, forcing him to rip off his headset in pain.

"What was that!?" he demanded.

"What was what?" Rezan nervously ask.

"That whistling!"

"Whistling? What whistling?"

Zek glared at him. "Are you telling me you didn't hear that whistling over the radio?"

"No..." Rezan slowly replied. "Play it for me?"

In response, Zek hit a switch, allowing the whistling to play out loud over a set of speakers.

"That's not whistling," Rezan slowly said. "That's the Huragok language."

Zek whirled on him in surprise. "And how do _you_ know that?" he demanded.

"I learned a little of it in training," Rezan replied, a bit defensively.

Zek couldn't help but raise his mouth in a condescending sneer. Why would Rezan even want to learn how to speak Huragok? Doing so was a bit like learning how to speak toaster: they weren't exactly the best conversationalist, so aside from being one giant waste of time, what exactly was the point?

"Well then," Zek began, trying to keep the derision out of his voice and failing. "Can you tell those gas bags to shut up? I'm trying to do some _actual_ work here."

"That's not exactly easy," Rezan admitted, "as the language also involves a lot of hand signals. Plus, I'm not sure this one would even listen to me. This one sounds very sad."

"What would those gas bags be sad about? Did they lose a crumb?" Zek sneered with a small laugh at his own joke, but unfortunately Rezan failed to notice.

"No... It's a little hard to understand," Rezan replied, his brow furrowed in concentration, "but I think it's trying to say one of its companions was just shot to death."

"Shot to -"

Realization suddenly struck Zek and he grabbed his radio.

"They're in the maintenance shafts!"

 **XXXXX**

Maria warily kept her rifle trained on the weird floating squid-like thing as she gestured for her team to sneak past. She felt it was safe to say that in the twenty years she'd been fighting the Covenant, she had NEVER seen something like that before, so she wasn't sure how it would react to her killing its friend like that.

Fortunately, the floating squid seemed content to be simply making random gestures in the air with its tentacles, as well as continue to whistle rather obnoxiously.

"What is that?" she heard Zalmir asking as he slipped past her. He must have been really puzzled by what he was seeing to break radio silence like that.

"I have no idea," Maria admitted. "Just keep moving."

He wordlessly nodded and moved down the shaft.

Shooting the squid one last look to make sure it wasn't going to pull out a weapon on her the moment she turned her back, Maria followed. The shaft they were in appeared to be some sort of maintenance shaft, specifically designed for those squids because it was rather small. It was tall enough she could walk through without having to crouch, but it was just narrow enough she need to angle her body ever so slightly. She really couldn't see Elites or Brutes forcing their way here, Jackals and Skirmishers always preferred much wider spaces, Grunts would have lowered the ceiling, and Drones liked things a bit more damp. Which left the squids.

Whatever the case was, Maria was just thankful they were lucky enough the tunnel was emanating enough heat to be picked up on thermals, and that Kai had been able to force the door open without leaving much of a mark. With just a bit more luck, it would be several more minutes before the Covenant realized they were down here, at which point Argon Team would have gained enough of a lead that it wouldn't matter.

Of course, as a soldier, Maria hated relying on luck. John may have been one giant, walking good luck charm, but for everyone else, they had to rely on their wits and their skills to get through the situations they often found themselves. Which is why she decided to throw all caution to the wind and urge her team to move as fast as they could.

"62, I'm picking up readings on multiple energy sources of varying strength," Kai suddenly reported from the front of the team.

Maria considered what he just said. "Lock on to the one with the strongest reading; that should be the main reactor."

A green light winked at her in acknowledgement.

Good. They were almost through this.

 **XXXXX**

 _"Those fools should have waited for me before engaging!"_ Kamet snapped over the radio. _"If those Demons manage to escape because of those fools' incompetence, I swear by all that is holy, HEADS WILL ROLL!"_

Zek did his best to ignore Kamet's ranting as he frantically worked on trying to locate the Demons. Unfortunately, he wasn't having much luck and Kamet wasn't helping things.

" _Where are the Demons now?"_ he heard him suddenly demanded to know over the radio.

Zek hit the talk button. "We're working on it sire, standby," he said a bit irritably, before quickly switching the radio off.

At the moment, he and Rezan were pouring over every single security camera they had access to. Unfortunately, there weren't any cameras inside the maintenance shafts themselves, mainly because the Huragok kept taking them apart. Nothing had ever been done about it because honestly? Who cared what the stupid gas bags were doing down there? As long as they did their jobs properly, they could do whatever they wanted.

But now Zek was beginning to realize how much of a security flaw that was. They had no way of tracking the Demons while they were in the shafts, and could only hope the Demons somehow accidently slipped up and provided some sort of signal, showing their exact location. But if even half the stories about the Demons were true, Zek doubted they would ever make a mistake like that, and could only watch the cameras in the hopes of catching a glimpse of them when they emerged.

"The Shipmaster has demanded an update," Rezan grimly reported.

Zek nervously swallowed. Great. Just what they needed.

"Any chance we could transfer him to Kamet and have him deal with it instead?" Zek hopefully asked.

"Probably," Rezan replied with a scoff. "Shipmasters generally prefer not speaking to 'lesser races' like us."

"Do it then," Zek command without second thought, immediately turning back to his cameras. It was a little hard to focus though, mainly because that same Huragok kept whistling over the radio. Or at least, he assumed it was the same one. He couldn't tell the difference between the stupid things.

"Can't you tell that thing to shut up?" Zek demanded. "What's it even saying anyways?"

Rezan frowned.

"I think it's just saying the same word over and over again," he reported after a moment. "Though I'm not sure what it is. Electricity, I think. Or energy."

"You think?" Zek echoed.

"Hey, I don't see _you_ trying to translate," Rezan said, somewhat defensively. "Like I said, the Huragok language also involves a lot of hand symbols, so without being able to see it, it could be saying, I don't know, power or something."

"Like... the power generator? A reactor?" Zek suggested.

"I don't know. Maybe." Rezan abruptly froze. "Wait... where do those tunnels lead?"

"All over the ship. That's what they're for."

"Does that include the main reactor?"

Zek paused, and then felt like smacking himself. For some reason, he'd gotten it in his head that the Demons were here to _capture_ the ship, which is why he thought they were headed for the bridge. But if they were here to _destroy_ the ship...

"Bring up all the cameras from engineering," Zek commanded as he grabbed his radio. "Major Kamet, we believe the Demons are heading straight for the main reactor."

Zek paused as Rezan brought up a view of the main reactor room.

"There!" he barked, snapping his fingers as, on screen, a hidden door suddenly opened and all three Demons began filing out. "Right there! Major Kamet, Demons spotted in the main reactor room!"

 _"Lock down the room, do not let anyone in or out, I am on the way!"_ Kamet immediately yelled back.

"Yes Sire!" Zek glanced at Rezan and nodded. "Do it."

Rezan hit a few buttons and on screen, Zek watched as all the doors to the room slide shut. The Demons didn't appear all that concerned and instead, seemed to be busying themselves doing who knew what. Whatever it was, it had Zek concerned and he quickly picked up his radio again.

"I'm directing all Security Lances to that room," Zek announced.

 _"NO! No you will not!"_

Zek jumped as Kamet's voice suddenly filtered through the radio. Zek must have accidently pressed the talk button when he was talking to himself because Kamet continued.

 _"You will not call any other Lances to the Demon's location,"_ he insisted. _"I will personally deal with all three Demons myself."_

And then, in a much softer voice, he added something Zek was pretty sure he wasn't supposed to hear. _"And in doing so, I shall reclaim my honor."_

The line went dead as Kamet switched his mic off, leaving Zek to stare at the radio in shock.

"What... what is he doing?" Zek demanded to know. "Curse these Sangheili and their incessant need for 'honor!'"

"He can't hope to fight all three Demons himself and win. Zek, he's dooming the entire ship to death!" Rezan pointed out.

Zek nodded his head in agreement, but then again, there wasn't much he could do. He'd been given a direct order, and all he could do was obey. That was his duty, and that was his responsibility.

At the same time, Zek very much did _not_ want to die just yet...

Coming to a decision, Zek reached for the radio...

 **XXXXX**

The sound of something yelling in Sangheili echoed overhead but Maria ignored it in lieu of magnetizing it (the nuke) to the wall and arming it so that if anyone attempted to remove it, it would detonate. Scanning the screen with her wrist mount TACPAD, Maria waited until she heard a chime over her headset, indicating the bomb was now ready and awaiting the detonation signal.

"That's it," she declared. "Let's go."

Her team nodded and headed straight for the nearest door. The doors had slammed shut the moment they had entered the room, but Maria wasn't worried. She still had a few blocks of C-12 left, so getting the door open once more wouldn't be a problem.

But before she could even reach the door, it abruptly slid open, and the Spartans were confront with a single Elite clad in red armor and welding an active energy sword, standing in their way.

The Elite Major took one look at the assembled Spartans and abruptly let out a roar. It was clear what the Elite wanted: one on one combat.

Maria glanced at Kai, and then over to Zalmir, and then without a word all three of them simultaneously raised their weapons and began blasting away -

\- only to see all their rounds pass right through the Elite without causing any damage. Maria didn't even bother wasting any time cursing.

"Holographic decoy!" she warned. "Watch your - "

The hairs on the back of her neck tingled and she immediately ducked as an energy sword passed right through the space her head had been occupying moments before.

The Elite Major was standing right behind her. How and when he got behind her without Maria or her team noticing, she didn't know and she didn't care as all she was concerned about was the fact he was right there, right now.

Hitting the Elite with a sidekick and shoving him away to try and obtain some room, Maria spun around, snapping up her rifle at the same time, but the Elite recovered a lot faster than she anticipated. He leapt forward, swinging his sword and Maria was just barely able to dodge but not before the Elite managed to cut through the front end of her rifle, shearing through the gas block and turning her weapon into a bolt action rifle in the process.

Sidestepping the next blow, Maria fired the round she had in the chamber right at the Elite's chest, which was absorbed by his shield, before hurtling the remains of her rifle at his face. In the split second it took for him to dodge, Maria whipped out her pistol but before she could properly bring it to bear, the Elite kicked it out of her hand and then immediately followed it up with a push kick to her face with the same leg. Maria had not anticipated the follow up and took the blow full force to the visor, sending her stumbling backwards and into Zalmir who instinctively caught her.

Sensing an opening, the Elite darted forward, trying to stab Maria through the chest with the twin prongs of his sword, but Maria quickly wrapped one leg around Zalmir's ankle and leaned back, deliberately tripping him and knocking both of them to the ground with her on top and him on the bottom.

The Elite then tried to stab down but Maria swung her legs, hitting the Elite's arm and deflecting his sword to the side with her left leg, while driving the heel of her right foot into the Elite's now-exposed chest, shoving him back a few centimeters. She quickly scrambled to her feet and out of the corner of her eye, she could see Kai stepping to the side for a better angle and bringing his shotgun to bear but before he could fire -

 _FWOOZ!_

A green bolt flew through the open door behind them and slammed in Kai's right pauldron, instantly turning it to slag.

"Contact twelve!" Kai bellowed and Maria half turned to see another Security Lance come charge up the corridor through the door they initially were looking into leaving the room from, screaming and hollering and firing their weapons.

"19, 170, deal with that!" Maria managed to bark out between breaths. "I'll deal with him!"

Two green lights winked at her as gunfire began roaring out from behind her, but Maria hardly noticed as all her attention was on the Elite standing in front of her. He had adopted a defensive stance, with his free arm extended out in front of him and his sword arm bent at the elbow, holding his sword right by his chest. But aside from wearily eyeing her, the Elite made no other motion as Maria reached down and pulled out her combat knife.

Hunching down slightly so she could better protect her vital organs, Maria brought her hands up in a defensive posture and waited. For a moment, both opponents watched each other, willing the other to make the first move.

Conscientious of her limited time, Maria struck first. She abruptly jabbed forward, as if to try and stab the Elite in the chest with her knife, but the Elite responded just as quickly, batting away her blade with his free hand and then stabbing downwards towards her lead leg with his sword. Maria deftly jerked her leg up and out of the way, then delivered a snap kick towards his face which he blocked with the hilt of his sword then he followed with a swift flick of his wrist, swinging his sword in an attempt to slash Maria across the abdomen. Maria in turned jerked back while simultaneously slashing at his face with her knife, but found she didn't quite have the reach and missed entirely. The motion did startle the Elite, causing him to reflexively scoot back and bring his sword back to his chest to try and protect it from further attack, only none came as Maria herself had taken the opportunity to take a step back and assume a defensive stance, having incorrectly predicted the Elite had been planning to immediately counterattack. The two fighters carefully watched each other with just a bit more weariness.

For her part, Maria was mentally reviewing everything that had happened in the last few seconds, trying to spot a weakness. This Elite was hardly the best fighter she had ever encountered, but he _was_ good. And it wasn't as if she was some sort of martial arts grandmaster herself. Every Spartan had received extensive training in just about every form of martial arts humanity had ever created, but Maria's interests had always been in pistols and gunslinging. She was no Fred or Will basically, so if she wanted to survive this, she needed to be extremely careful.

Despite her caution, the Elite's attack came out of nowhere. Perhaps picking up on her slightly distracted state, the Elite decided to be the one to open up the fight this time and launched himself forward in an attempt to skewer Maria with his sword. Maria was just barely able to twist her body out of the way, but it turned out to be a feint as the Elite swung his free hand in a sort of roundhouse punch, slamming his fist into the side of Maria's head with enough force to send her staggering.

Reeling from the blow, Maria did her best to avoid stumbling into the extremely sharp plasma sword, spinning around in a backwards motion and then ducking just as quickly as the Elite slashed his sword diagonally upwards, trying his best to cut her in half. She was then forced to leap off the ground as the Elite abruptly crouched and sliced horizontally with his sword, but then, before Maria could land, the Elite darted forward and slammed his shoulder into her while she was still in mid-air. Maria was thrown backwards, landing heavily on her back a couple meters away, but she was given no time to recover as the Elite let out a triumphant roar and surged forward to attack. Maria quickly rolled to the left as the Elite stabbed his sword into the ground where she had been moments ago, and kept rolling as the Elite dragged his weapon in her direction, the superheated plasma blade easily cutting right through the metal deck like it was made of paper.

Sparks were unexpectedly thrown into the Elite's face as he accidently cut through something electrical and in that split second he was distracted, Maria reversed her rolled and kicked the Elite right in the face. The Elite was sent staggering backwards and Maria leapt to her feet and charged forward for the attack, only to find she must have not hit him as hard as she thought because he essentially recovered instantaneously and Maria was forced to immediately switch gears and return to the defensive.

Turning his blade so it was parallel to the ground, the Elite stabbed forward right at Maria's face but fortunately Maria was able to stick her knife in the open space between the two plasma prongs and run it forward until it hit the hilt and deflect the energy sword to the Elite's left so that his blade arm was crossed his chest, and then pushed with all her strength to keep it pinned there. With his guard down, Maria immediately head-butted him and as his head snapped back from the blow, tried to follow it up with a vicious jab with her free hand, but before the blow could connect, the Elite twisted his sword, putting the metal blade of her knife in contact with the two prongs of plasma, causing it to immediately melt, destroying her weapon and the one thing keeping his arm pinned. He swung his sword horizontally at about neck height as Maria dropped the remains of her knife to the ground, and Maria was just barely able to duck under his blow, but then she found herself in a position where she was able to wrap her arms around the Elite's waist, lift him off the ground, and topple over backwards, much to the Elite's surprise.

Sadly, due to her haste, Maria wasn't quite able to pull off her suplex with absolute perfection and thus instead of landing on the Elite like she intended, both fighters painfully ended up landing on their sides. But, given that she had been expecting the impact, Maria was able to recover first, hitting the Elite in the face with an upper elbow strike and then driving the sole of her right foot into his chest, sending both fighters sliding across the floor away from each other. Both combatants scrambled to their feet at about the same time and the Elite, perhaps hoping to catch Maria off guard, leapt forward to try and skewer her with his sword but because he was still reeling from the blow to the head, he wasn't as fast as he had been and Maria was able to see the strike coming.

Stepping to the side at the last second, Maria stuck out her left arm and managed to clothesline the Elite, catching him in the neck and sending him sprawling to the ground once more. She tried curb stomping his face into the ground but missed as he rolled to the side and hastily retaliated, swinging his sword up and between her legs, trying to bisect her vertically, but Maria was just able to grab a hold of his wrist. Despite the awkwardness of the situation, Maria nevertheless started squeezing with all her might, and the Elite let out a cry of pain, the first noise both of them had made since the dual began, as his vambrace cracked under the pressure and started to dig into his forearm.

His energy sword abruptly disappeared in a flash as the pain from his forearm forced him to release the hilt, and Maria hastily stepped on it and slid it across the floor, out of reach. She could hear a _clang_ noise as it hit a wall somewhere behind her but as she was doing that though, the Elite abruptly punched her with his free hand and, temporarily balanced on one leg as she was, Maria was forced to release her hold on the Elite as she was knocked off her feet.

Landing on her back a couple meters away, Maria was nonetheless able to maintain her momentum by throwing her legs up and over her head, performing a rather awkward back roll. As soon as her feet touched the ground, she charged forward, catching the Elite, who was only just beginning to stagger upright, off guard.

She opened up with a knee strike to his face, one that he was able to block, but that only left him vulnerable to the downward elbow strike she delivered to the back of his head. The blow knocked him towards the ground but Maria quickly grabbed his shoulders and hauled him upright, and the Elite immediately brought his hands up to protect his face but that only left him open to the right upper cut that Maria drove into his stomach. The Elite reflexively dropped his hands to cradle his stomach so Maria hammered the side of his face with her left elbow, sending him stumbling backwards. Before he could get far, Maria jabbed him into the throat with her right hand, crushing his windpipe.

Choking, the Elite nevertheless tried to still fight back, feinting a jab with his left hand, which was followed by a genuine roundhouse punch with his right hand, however Maria was able to easily see through the deception. Snagging his arm out of the air, she threw it into an arm lock, causing the Elite to gasp out in pain. He tried to punch her with his free hand but Maria easily blocked the blow with her left leg, and then kneed him in the face with the same motion.

Taking advantage of the Elite's stunned state, she ducked under his arm while maintaining hold of his wrist, backing up so her back was pressed up against his upper torso, and then abruptly leaned forward while pulling on his arm with all her might. The Elite managed to let out a surprised squawk as he was flipped over Maria's shoulder before landing heavily on his back on the ground.

Not giving a chance for the Elite to recover, Maria hauled him upright so that he was laying on his side before planting her right foot on his neck, pressing down firmly while at the same time, using his arm to pull him upwards.

The Elite immediately tried to punch her with his free hand but because she was standing behind him, there was no easy way for him to reach. Nor did he have any sort of leverage to break free.

As the blood circulation slowly but surely began to be cut off from his brain, the Elite's motions became more and more frantic as he desperately tried to break free, but Maria mercilessly maintained her hold on him, and slowly the Elite's blows grew weaker and weaker. Suddenly the Elite went limp, his free arm landing on the ground with a mute thump.

Maintaining her hold just in case the Elite was faking it, Maria waited a few more seconds before she was convinced he was dead. Letting his body fall to the ground, Maria let out a mute groan of pain. Despite the hydrostatic gel built into her Mjolnir Mark IV suit, she was black and blue all over, while her armor itself was covered in all sorts of dents and grooves from the blows the Elite had been raining on her. Furthermore, her lip had busted open and she could feel blood dripping from her left nostril. Nonetheless, she was still alive and he wasn't.

Walking over and retrieving her pistol from the ground, she casually shot the Elite a couple of times in the head just to make sure he really was dead, wincing slightly at the loud noise: her suppressor had somehow snapped off.

As she unscrewed the now useless device, she suddenly became aware of the general lack of gunfire in the room.

"Team, sound off!"

"Exit route is secured," Kai reported as he walked back into the room, shoving more shells into his shotgun. He was in turned, followed by Zalmir, looking no worse for wear. "No casualties to report."

Maria nodded. "Good. Let's - "

A blast door on the far end of the room slid open.

"Contact, six o'clock!" Maria bellowed, snapping her pistol up and drilling the first Covenant soldier that charged through the doorframe right between the eyes. "Reserve bounding overwatch sequentially by Spartan number! 19, cover!"

"Covering!" Kai bellowed as his shotgun roared to life.

Maria nailed one more Covenant soldier in head before dashing from the room, reloading as she ran. Her team wasn't out of the woods just yet, but they were almost there.

They were almost there.

 **XXXXX**

"...Demons are on Eayn Deck, heading down the main corridor! All Lances, move to intercept!" Zek frantically yelled into the radio. This was impossible! How could the Demons have fought against such numbers, and yet emerge without a scratch!? That wasn't fair!

The computer had been steadily adding up the total number of Covenant martyrs so far and things were looking grim. Dozens upon dozens of Covenant warriors, many of whom had been Zek's friends and comrades, had been killed already and given the Demon's continual presence aboard this vessel, Zek knew those numbers would only grow. How could a simple Ruuhtian defeat such an unstoppable force?

The only consolation Zek had was that Kamet had managed to prevent the Demons from doing whatever they had been planning to do inside the main reactor room. While fighting the head Demon in a one-on-one dual was both reckless and stupid, and had cost Kamet his life, there was no denying Kamet had managed to delay them long enough for more Security Lances to show up and drive them off.

Still, the sooner the Demons were off his ship, the better Zek would sleep tonight.

"Rezan, see if you can't make the Shipmaster think we're sealing off the blast doors, but don't actually do it. I don't even care about trying to kill these Demons: I just want them off my ship. Rezan?"

Zek glanced at Rezan, but he wasn't paying attention. Instead, he was carefully staring at a feed from one of the cameras inside the main reactor room.

"Zek…" he slowly began, "what is that?"

Zek looked up to see what Rezan was staring at. It was a sort of egg shaped weapon, maybe only about the length of his forearm in height at most, with a small blinking red light. Despite the rather innocent look to it, Zek felt the blood in his veins go cold as he knew exactly what that device was.

"That's a bomb," he announced in hush tones as he reflexively climbed to his feet.

A horrified look appeared on Rezan's face. "Voi… paska(7)…"

"Alert the Shipmaster!" Zek snapped, and Rezan jumped into action. "Get everyone out of there! Call up some Huragok immediately and have them – "

A shadow crossed in front of Zek's camera, temporarily distracting him, and he looked up to see one of the Unggoy wander into view, staring at the bomb with a curious look on his face. To Zek's horror, the Unggoy began reaching out his fat stubby hands towards the bomb.

Zek leapt for his radio.

"NO! DON'T TOUCH – "

The Unggoy grabbed the bomb.

 **XXXXX**

"Bounding! _Cover!_ " Maria screamed as the slide on her pistol locked back.

She surged upright and began running down the hall, slapping Zalmir on the shoulder as she ran past. Immediately, his SAW roared to life, preventing the Covenant from effectively returning fire or advancing. In front of her, she could see Kai further down the corridor setting up to cover for Zalmir's retreat.

They were making good time. As long as they kept leapfrogging back down the corridor, they would be able to keep the Covenant at bay long enough for them to –

A loud chime filled Maria's ears and at the instant, time seemed to slow down to two hundredths of a second as just about every neuron inside her brain lit up with activity. Several thoughts immediately ran through her brain:

First, was the realization that the noise was the sound of the Fury tactical nuclear weapon being activated. But how? She hadn't triggered anything yet because they were still at least two hundred meters away from the extraction point!

Two was the understanding that while she was only about three steps away from Zalmir, because she was moving away from him, it would actually take her more time to stop, turn around, and grab him as opposed to simply continuing to charge forward in Kai's direction.

And finally three, was the cold acceptance that one of her teammates was going to die within the next second or so.

The last conscious thought that passed through Maria's head was regret over the fact she would never be able to see what sort of Spartan Zalmir would have become before her reflexes took over and she hurtled herself at Kai, wrapping one arm around his abdomen as she tackled him while at the same time, pulling out her drop shield and throwing it to the ground.

She had just enough time to see the blue shield start to form before everything vanished in a brilliant white flash.

 **XXXXX**

 **UNSC** _ **Moonlight Sonata**_

 **Lieutenant Commander Luzader**

"Sir, we have confirmed detonation of the bomb!"

Luzader spat out the coffee he'd been drinking. " _WHAT!?_ Did Spartan-062 confirm she and her team were clear of the ship yet!?"

"Negative sir!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Luzader could see Volkov rising to his feet in alarm, but he ignored him in lieu of dashing over to his bridge technician.

"Detachment Argon! Did they get out? _Did they get out!?_ "

"I don't know sir!"

"Radio comms? Transponders? Beacons? Is there anyone way we can pick them up!?"

Luzader's technician threw his hands up in frustration. "The entire area is awashed with both radiation and debris! My sensors can't pick _anything_ up right now!"

"Give me visual of the entire area! Track for any debris that could potentially be the Spartans! NOW!"

A screen appeared in front of Luzader's face showing target 1-Delta as it disintegrated in real-time right before his very eyes. In the distance, he could see the gravity lift that had connected target 1-Echo with the surface of Actium abruptly disappearing as the remainder of the Covenant's fleet began reacting to the unexpected destruction of one of their own from deep within their own ranks. In the bottom right hand corner, Luzader could see a HUD display filling up with blue dots as the UNSC fleet reacted, charging forward straight towards their objective, but as the sublight engines on the Covenant's fleet activated and their ships began breaking away from low orbit, Luzader knew the UNSC Navy would be too late to be able to do much damage.

" _Commander, what the_ **fuck** _was that? Were my orders not explicit enough? I told you to inform me the exact moment you were about to detonate the bomb!"_ he heard Admiral Spaatz screaming over the radio, but Luzader ignored him in lieu of visually searching for any signs that Argon Team had made it off the ship alive.

"Come on, come on," he muttered under his breath. "FUCK! Does _anybody_ have _anything!?"_

Everybody on the bridge shook their heads.

"Wait, sir! I think I got something!" Luzader's radio technician abruptly called out, and Luzader all but sprinted over to her.

"What is it?" Luzader anxiously asked her.

"An Army AA battery just picked up three rapidly moving objects passing through the upper stratosphere right now!"

"The Spartans?"

"Uh… unknown. The Army isn't looking in the right direction."

"Execute a command overwrite and give me control of that search radar," Luzader barked. "Track those objects and give me a trajectory, now!"

The technician's fingers were a blur as she rapidly typed out a few commands on her keyboard, only to mournfully shake her head. "Search radar is mounted on a self-propelled vehicle sir, I can't execute a command overwrite remotely from here."

"God **dammit!"** Luzader snapped, driving his fist into the console and causing his technician to jump in fright.

Without saying another word, Luzader grabbed a hold of her screen and began pouring over the data. The Army search radar hadn't actually picked up much, as it had only picked up on the objects as it passed through its narrow search window, but somehow, in his heart, Luzader knew those objects were the Spartans.

The search radar hadn't been able to confirm what those objects were, but it had been able to clock their speed and as Luzader glanced at the numbers, he couldn't help but wince. At the speeds the Spartans had been moving at, even if they had survived the initial explosion, the impact alone would kill them.

His technician suddenly brought her hand to her ear, catching his attention, and Luzader watched as a frown pass over her face.

"Sir, I'm picking up… never mind sir, it's gone."

"What?" Luzader demanded.

"I'm sorry sir, I thought I had just picked up Argon Team's transponders sir, but it disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared. Must have been a glitch or an echo."

"How long was it active for?"

Luzader jumped at the sound of Volkov's voice coming from directly behind him, having not heard him approach in the first place. He glanced over his shoulder to see Volkov standing there, an ashen look on his normally stoic face, staring at the screen with an intense look on his face.

The technician glanced at her screen. "Signal was active for exactly… 14.762 seconds sir."

"That is not is not a glitch, those are the Spartans," Volkov snapped. "Where did the signal originate?"

The technician looked apologetic. "We didn't have enough time to zero in on a location sir."

"Give me an approximate location."

"This is about as specific as I can get it sir," the technician informed them as she tapped a few keys, and a map of the city of Byzas appeared on screen. It began zooming in until only the downtown area was showing.

Luzader felt the blood draining from his face. Not only did the area consist of almost half the city, much of the area had already been washed away in a sea of red dots. That was rapidly become enemy controlled territory. If the Covenant managed to get their hands on the Spartans…

Luzader glanced at Volkov, who had a similar look on his face indicating that, he too, understood the implications. They exchanged a look.

This?

This was not good.

* * *

 **Covenant Race Names:**

Kig-Yar: Jackal

Ruuhtian: a sub-species of the Jackal race; specifically, they are the ones seen in all of the Bungie games, most notably wielding the brightly colored round energy shields on their arms (in contrast, in the 343 trilogy, they've been mostly replaced by a _third_ Jackal sub-species known as the Ibie'sh)

T'vaoan: Skirmishers (these are actually another Jackal sub-species)

Unggoy: Grunt

Sangheili: Elite

Mgalekgolo: Hunter

Huragok: Engineer

 **The Spartans**

All three members of the Spartan are actually canon Spartans. Sort of.

\- Maria-062 is a Spartan II whose first and only appearance is in the _Halo Graphic Novel,_ specifically the _Armor Testing_ story. Taking place just before the events of Halo 2, Maria is responsible for testing the Mjolnir Mark VI armor just before it gets issued to the Master Chief. In the story, it's specifically mentioned she has retired from the service, for reason unknown (although information from other media suggest it may have been because of severe injuries sustained during combat.)

Sidenote: virtually all the Spartan IIs in canon have some sort of "unique trait" about them: Master Chief was luck, Linda was the best shot, Kelly was the fastest, Kurt Ambrose had spidey sense, etc. I figured Maria's unique trait would be that she's a gunslinger. (I was originally going to make her a demo expert, but apparently there's already a Spartan that fits that role: Grace-093 from _Halo: First Strike_ )

\- Kai-A019 is a Spartan III from Alpha Company, whose first and only appearance is from the live-action short _Birth of a Spartan_ , which was made for the launch of _Halo: Reach._ In the short, he appears for all of four seconds, sitting next to Carter-A259 as they're both transported to orbit to receive their augmentations.

\- Spartan-B170 is a Spartan III from Bravo Company. Out of all three Spartans that show up in this chapter, there is virtually nothing known about this Spartan, not even his or her name or gender. The only mention of this Spartan comes from extended material only available on titled _Transcript of Mendez-Ambrose transmission_. In it, Lieutenant Commander Ambrose attempts to have Spartan-B170 and Lucy-B091 (from the novel, _Halo: Ghosts of Onyx)_ deployed on a deep reconnaissance mission just prior to Operation: Torpedo.

For the purpose of this story, I went ahead and made the Spartan a male and named him "Zalmir." Why? Because I wanted a character that had a name that started with "Z." (I'm being completely serious btw.)

 **Footnotes:**

1\. Bottarga is the Italian name for a delicacy of salted, cured fish roe, though it's not strictly an Italian only dish; many different countries have similar dishes to this one under different names: in Croatia, it's known as butarga or butarda and in Frances, it's known as boutargue, just to name a few. For more information, check out the Wikipedia page: wiki/Bottarga

2\. Garum is a type of fermented fish sauce that was used in Ancient Greek, Rome, and during the Byzantium eras.

3\. Eayn: according to Halopedia, Eayn is the name of the Jackal homeworld.

4\. Jörmungandr: this is actually from Norse mythology. The Jörmungandr is a giant sea serpent, so large it's able to surround the Earth and grasp its own tail. In the mythology, Jörmungandr is one of Loki's children, alongside Fenrir and Hel, and during Ragnarök, will ultimately be the one to kill Thor (who of course, is the Norse God of Thunder.)

On a more headcanon note, as Jackals have a somewhat avian nature (similar to the dinosaurs,) I thought it would make sense if one of their natural enemies would be snakes, as snakes regularly eat (among other things,) birds. Which is why in that situation, instead of think of a large cat (which a human might,) Zek's first instinct is to compare the Spartan to a snake.

The curses the Skirmishers and Jackals are using are actually Finnish (as in, from Finland.) Why Finnish? Well, because as tvtropes puts it: "As Long as it Sounds Foreign."

A rundown of the curses used and their meaning:

5\. Ryökäle: "scoundrel" (this one, according to my research, is only really a curse among the older generation)

6\. Vittu: the word translates into "cunt," but from what I've read, in Finnish, the word is used in the same way as the word "fuck" is used in (American) English

7\. Voi paska: "oh shit" or "oh crap"


	20. Chapter 20

Thorthemighty321

I think you're right in the idea that the Huragok wouldn't exactly be a surefire way in disarming the nuke. Given their engineering abilities though, I imagine they, at the very least, would know better than to touch the device an enemy boarding team had just left behind. At least, not before securing it.

Broman

Thanks for the corrections Broman! I must have accidently changed something when I uploaded the chapter as that error wasn't there in my original draft. If you see anymore, feel free to let me know.

To address your questions:

\- The only change in the Spartan names is that in MIA, I sometimes spelled "Kai" as "KAI" (in all caps.) I did that because Moss wouldn't know if "Kai" was a name or a designation (as Spartan names would be classified information,) so mentally, he was constantly switching between the two. Plus, Moss was going a bit crazy by that point in the story.

\- The UNSC Moonlight Sonata was the only Prowler in system at the time of the invasion and wasn't equipped with nuclear mines as part of the reason _why_ they were in the system was to get resupplied.

* * *

 **Chapter 20**

 **Newington, Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
1147**

 **Tariq**

 **"INCOMING!"**

 _KABOOM!_

Tariq couldn't help but flinch as the plasma mortar slammed into the trailer. At this point, it was already empty, but there was still enough hydrogen fuel residue left inside for it to create a decent sized boom. The shockwave hit the fuel specialist with enough force to knock him over, but fortunately there was little to no shrapnel as the light metal body of the fuel tank had been instantly incinerated by the blast.

"Son of a..." Tariq muttered to himself as he watched the specialist pick himself off the ground through his rear camera before hitting the talk button on his mic. "Dude, you better get the fuck out of here!"

 _"Way ahead of you man,"_ the specialist replied, sounding shaken from the near miss. _"Good luck!"_

Tariq didn't bother dignifying that comment with a response as he watched the specialist yank the now useless hose from the fuel port and run off.

"Goddamn resupplies in the middle of fucking firefights: now that's going to be the death of me," Tariq grumbled under his breath as he secured Lillian's fuel port cover. More loudly, he announced, "We're topped off and ready to go First Sergeant!"

"Driver, get us back in this fight!" Noble immediately ordered.

"Yes First Sergeant!" Corona yelled back, throwing the tank into gear, and Tariq braced himself as Lillian lurched forward.

Corona carefully maneuvered them through the shattered streets as the shriek of more incoming plasma mortars continued to echo overhead, but Tariq was more concerned about the sheer amount of gunfire coming from just down the street; clearly the Covenant attack had yet to abate. Sucked, but it was what it was. Honestly, Tariq was just glad they had finally gotten a resupply of enough ammo for him to effectively fight back.

"Gunner, load up one HEAT and one SABOT and standby to engage on my mark!" Noble barked.

"Copy," Tariq replied, doing just that while at the same time, reaching out and giving the charging handle to his coaxial machine gun a good tug to make sure it was loaded.

They headed out to the defensive line that had been set up just outside of the town limits, where several other vehicles were already located, firing their primary weapons at targets unseen located inside a large cloud of black smoke on the other side of the field.

"Dragoon 2-2, Cataphract 07, sitrep?" Noble demanded over the radio as Corona pulled into their assigned position on the line, ignoring all the plasma fire that saturated the area around them.

 _"Covenant are beginning their next push with armor; a lot of armor! Must have been what those cruisers were dumping onto the surface during the time they were holding position over the city! No sign of infantry yet, but they're only a quarter way across the field!"_

"Alright, copy that! Listen, a fuel and ammo truck is waiting for you in this quadrant! Fall back to reload while you've still got the chance, break! All Charlie Section victors, standby to provide covering fire for Dragoon 2-2 on my mark. MARK!"

Tariq grabbed the controls for his coax and started hosing down the field with the machine gun. Just on the edge of his optics, he could see a single Armadillo IFV pulling out their hull-down position and retreat back to town, and he continued firing until Dragoon 2-2 indicated they were clear.

"Gunner, slow down the rate of fire and find me something else to kill," Noble demanded.

"Copy! Corona, help spot targets and call them out as you see them!"

"On it!"

Tariq grabbed the controls to his turret and began pivoting left to right. Covenant smoke screens, like the UNSC, were designed to mask targets from view on a wide range of spectrums, but it wasn't perfect. At this range, most of the advancing Covenant were completely hidden from view, even through his thermals, but occasionally the smoke shifted just long enough for him to catch sight of a...

"TARGET! Covenant Hunter thirty degrees, eight zero zero meters!" Noble abruptly called out.

"On target!" Tariq yelled back.

"Fire!"

"On the way!"

Lillian jerked back as she spat an eight hundred millimeter long dart made out of composite material downrange at nearly seventeen hundred meters per second, but Tariq wasn't able to see if it hit because the smoke shifted once more, hiding his target from view.

"Target! Assault Wraith, three three six degrees left, seven seven nine!" Noble called out.

"On the way!"

Lillian recoiled again as she sent another shell downrange but Tariq wasn't paying attention as he impatiently waited for at least one of his cannons to finish reloading.

"Gun up!"

"Target! I got a heat sig, three degrees right, range seven three four!" Corona suddenly yelled.

"What type of heat sig?" Tariq demanded as he considered his munitions.

"I'm not sure," Corona admitted. "I think it was a vehicle!"

"Gunner, hit it with a SABOT just in case it was a Hunter," Noble commanded.

"Copy. On the way!"

 _ **BAOOOSSHHHHH CLANG!**_

Tariq automatic jerked as he felt something hit the side of the turret and deflect off, but causing the entire vehicle to shake nonetheless.

"Anyone see where that shot came from?" Noble demanded.

"Negative!" Tariq yelled back as he swiveled his optics around. "Can't see shit with all this smoke!"

"Forget about it then! Shift target: three six degrees, six seven nine, enemy Shadow!"

"On target!"

"Send it!"

"On the way!"

Downrange, a large fireball suddenly formed in the middle of the smoke cloud as something exploded, lighting up the area and temporarily silhouetting an entire line of Covenant vehicles allowing Tariq to see there were a lot more Covenant advancing on their position than he anticipated.

"Shit! First Sergeant, you see that!?"

"Yeah, I did!" Noble yelled back. "Keep up the fire, I'm calling in an arty strike!"

"Got it! Corona, keep spotting targets!" Tariq commanded as he planted his face into his optics and just so happened to catch sight of a Hunter charging forward, firing his plasma cannon. He reflectively fired a SABOT, and Tariq had the grim satisfaction of watching as the dart scored a direct hit against the Hunter, smashed into his chest and caving it in.

Behind him, Tariq could hear Noble yelling into the radio, "Havoc, this is Cataphract, do you copy? Fire mission, all guns, HE quick! Armor and infantry in the open! Target: fire concentration alpha through delta, drop one five, left fifty, fire for effect!"

As he waited for the artillery to hit, Tariq quickly panned his turret around, trying to spot something else.

"Target! Shadow APC, three four nine degrees, six one seven!" he yelled, mostly for Corona's benefit so he didn't accidentally call out the same target.

Tariq dropped his crosshairs over the Shadow and was just about to pull the trigger when it started taking fire from another tank. Plumes of dirt were thrown into the air as the Shadow managed to somehow dodge the first shell, but then there was an orange flash as the second HEAT shell slammed into the Shadow's side, tearing the vehicle apart like it was nothing more than a simple tin can.

Amazingly, some of the crew managed to survive as Tariq could see the shadowy figures of Covenant infantry, outlined by the now burning APC, jumping from their vehicle. They hit the ground and started to run for their lives, but weren't able to get far. Without hesitation, Tariq began spraying them down with his coax.

 _RATATATATA!_

"Target destroyed!" he announced. "Shifting targets!"

"Banshees!" Corona suddenly yelled out and Tariq jerked his head up in time to see an entire flight of Banshees break out from the cloud cover overhead and start to head in their direction. Two of the Banshees immediately broke away from the group and started to dive towards the UNSC forces.

"INCOMING!"

 _ **FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ CLANG!**_

The Banshees began strafing the entire line, spraying down the area with plasma. Tariq winced as one bolt struck the top of the tank, doing no damage but to nerves.

Grabbing the controls to their RWS, Tariq swiveled the machine gun around just as one of the Banshees fired a fuel rod cannon, which fortunately missed all the assembled vehicles.

"Bowman, Cataphract 07! You plan on shooting back anytime soon!?" Tariq demanded over the radio even as he opened up.

 _"We're engaging!"_

 _ **BAMBAMBAMBAM!**_

Autocannon rounds rippled through the sky as one of the nearby SPAAGs opened fire. The Banshees nimbly weaved through the fire, but then an Argent smashed into the trailing one, knocking it out of the sky. Tariq turned his attention to the surviving Banshee, but at that moment a fresh pair of Banshees broke through the cloud cover, cannons blazing, and forcing Tariq to divert.

"TARGET! Covenant Hunter, one five degrees, five five zero meters!" Corona bellowed.

"Gunner! Shift your focus to the ground targets! Let the SPAAGs worry about the aerial ones!" Noble barked.

"Fuck!" Tariq yelped as a fuel rod fired by one of the Banshees exploded nearby, but Tariq nevertheless obeyed. "On the way!"

The entire cannon recoiled as Tariq fired a SABOT downrange but in his haste to engage, his aim had been off and he missed the Hunter entirely.

"Miss! Reengage!" Noble screamed, but now the Hunter had a lock on their position. Tariq could see the green glow around the Hunter's arm cannon growing in intensity before he abruptly fired.

"Incoming!"

 _ **BOOOSHHHHHH!**_

A stream of radiative green plasma streaked towards them. Most of the beam slammed into the dirt berm Lillian was sitting right behind, throwing smoke, ash, and all sorts of burning material into the air and temporarily obscuring Tariq's view. Without thinking, Tariq immediately returned fire, even though he couldn't see his target.

At first, he thought he somehow managed to score a direct hit, but then another stream of plasma quickly put that idea to bed.

 _ **BOOOOOSSSSHHHH! CLANG!**_

Temperatures within the tank spiked as the stream slammed into Lillian's upper glacis plate, and Tariq could almost hear the armor in that area melting. Fortunately, that was also where Lillian's armor was thickest, so all Tariq had to do was impatiently wait for the stream to end before he could shoot back. This time though, he made sure he had a proper bead on the Hunter before firing.

"On the way!"

The Hunter exploded, sending chunks of bright orange goo in all directions, but another Hunter quickly took his place, firing a fuel rod cannon in Tariq's general direction, and forcing him to brace himself as Lillian was struck once more.

"Come on!" Tariq snarled under his breath as he fired back. "Where the hell is our damn artillery support?"

As if on cue -

 _"Cataphract, Havoc. Splash, over."_

At once, all sorts of shells began falling out of the sky like some sort of terrifying hailstorm, filling the air with a loud whistling noise that was audible even from within the tank. The entire Covenant line was lit up as high explosive shells landed among them, upheaving a massive amount of dirt and sending shrapnel whizzing in all directions. And it was a tremendous amount of firepower: Havoc was a 203mm heavy artillery battery assigned directly to the 53rd Armored Division and intended for use against heavily armored targets such as bunkers.

But despite all this, the Covenant continued their advance, heedless of the casualties they were taking.

"Havoc, this Cataphract!" Tariq could hear Noble yell into the radio. "Drop fifty and repeat! I say again, drop fifty and repeat fire mission! Over!"

To Tariq and Corona, she barked, "Gunner! Maintain your rate of fire! Don't let any of the Covenant through!"

"Target! Covenant AA Wraith! Three five one, three five zero meters!" Corona bellowed, a hint of nervousness starting to creep into his voice.

"On the way!"

Tariq pulled the trigger, and then violent swore as his shell glanced off the Wraith's hull, leaving a sizable mark where the shell hit but failed to penetrate. "Fuck! Deflection! I'm reengaging!"

He frantically tapped his foot on the ground as he waited for his cannons to reload, but before they could, the Wraith abruptly returned fire, sending an entire salvo of fuel rods in their direction.

"FUEL RODS!"

The entire ground shook as the fuel rods slammed into the area surrounding the UNSC line, showering everyone with dirt and other debris, but Tariq barely give it any heed as he was too distracted by what he was seeing in front of him. By the looks of it, all the Wraiths and Hunters were continuing their advance, however all the Shadows were starting to hang back. Even as he watched, their doors began to open, disgorging all sorts of infantry from deep within their bowels.

"Dismounts!" Tariq called out in warning. "First Sergeant, we've got dismounts!"

"I see them!" Noble replied. "07 to all Charlie Section victors, we have foot mobiles on the field! All Dragoon assets, standby to engage!"

All around them, Tariq could see their mechanized infantry support taking up firing positions.

"All gunners, focus fire on enemy armor," Noble commanded. "All TCs, support the infantry!"

"Understood!" Tariq yelled back, even as he heard their RWS start to fire. "Target! Wraith, zero five degrees, three hundred meters!"

Tariq pulled the trigger and Lillian spat fire once again. With the Covenant this close, Tariq was able to watch as the shell slam into the Wraith right about where the turret connected with the body of the vehicle. The shell exploded upon impact, causing the turret to blow off completely, disabling the Wraith. Tariq was just about to fire another shell to finish the vehicle off, when all the hatches popped open and the crew began streaming out.

"Troops in the open!" Tariq yelled before switching over to his coax and began spraying them down.

His first target was the Wraith's turret gunner. Locking his crosshairs over the blue armored creature, he sent a fifty round burst in his direction and watched as a little under a quarter of the rounds hit, causing the Elite's shields to light up. The Elite immediately dove into a nearby crater, one where Tariq wouldn't be able to hit him with his machine gun.

"TC, we got an Elite hanging out in that crater over there!" Tariq said, firing a burst to both mark the spot as well as keep the Elite pinned down. "Can you get him?"

He could hear the heavy machine gun going off behind him and he watched as a score of tracer rounds pepper the edge of the crater.

"Negative!" Noble yelled. "I don't have the height! Gunner, shift targets, I'll get the crunchies to take him out!"

Tariq didn't bother wasting time to reply and instead immediately panned his turret to the right, trying to locate the other Elite crewman, but at this point the Elite was gone. Whether he had been killed by someone else or had managed to find cover, Tariq didn't know, but he couldn't dwell on it for too long.

"Target! Wraith, dead ahead!" Corona yelled.

"On the way!"

The shell hit the Wraith dead on, punching right through the outer hull and exploding somewhere in the center. The entire Wraith went up like it'd been hit by a thermonuclear bomb. What was left of the chassis was sent crashing to the ground, joining the dozens of corpses of other Wraiths and Hunters that already been destroyed or killed, and leaving behind only about half a dozen vehicles left still intact. Yet, despite all this, and the massive amount of casualties the Covenant had taken already, they continued to press their attack.

"Banshees!"

A trio of Banshees came screaming in, flying parallel to the entire defensive line. The lead Banshee was immediately knocked out from the sky by a series of autocannon rounds, but the remaining two continued their attack run, undeterred. Plasma cannons blazing, they strafed the UNSC forces, and Tariq grimaced as Lillian was struck several times.

The Banshees finished their run but just before they were about to pull away, both of them simultaneously fired their fuel rod cannons. Tariq was too far away to see what they were aiming at, but he definitely felt the blast as whatever they hit exploded, sending a shockwave rippling across the surface.

"Goddammit," Tariq muttered as cries for a medic began filtering through the radio. "TC, any chance we could get the Air Force back and give us some god damn air cover!?"

"Negative! As soon as those cruisers appeared overhead, we ceded control of the air! Those cruisers may be gone now, but it's still going to be a struggle to regain the initiative!"

All of a sudden, Noble let out a string of curses.

"Got to reload!" she yelled. "RWS is out of ammo! Gunner, cover!"

"I'm on it!" Tariq promised as he switched over to his coax. Behind him, he could hear Noble grabbing a couple of cans of ammo before popping open the top hatch.

Panning his turret around, Tariq surveyed the field. By now, the rest of the assaulting Covenant vehicles had been destroyed, leaving only the dismounted infantry to fend for themselves. Without their vehicles, retreat was impossible, but rather than do the sensible thing and surrender, in typical Covenant fashion, the Covenant infantry opted to battle to the death.

"Covenant are charging!" Corona warned and indeed, Tariq could see the Covenant rising out of whatever hole they had taken cover in.

Screaming at the top of their lungs and firing their weapons wildly in all directions, the Covenant struggled through the snow covered field, regardless of the murderous fire that was cutting them down.

Sitting in a seventy tonne vehicle, eliminating the remaining Covenant was almost child's play. Panning his turret to the right, Tariq fired a few quick bursts at a Jackal, completely removing his head from his shoulders. Panning to the left, he shot a Grunt in the leg, sending him crashing to the ground. Rather than simply accept his fate, the Grunt attempted to pull out a plasma grenade, so Tariq simply fired a longer burst, cutting the creature in half. Spotting an Elite nearby, Tariq jerked his turret in his direction and started hosing him down. The Elite was hit several times, his shield immediately collapsing, but before Tariq could finish him off, the Elite took a direct hit from a 40mm shell fired by one of the Armadillos. The ensuing explosion left nothing describable.

Without warning, Tariq's turret stopped moving and all of his electronics went dark as the entire tank shut down.

"EMP!" Tariq immediately bellowed, recognizing the signs of a vehicle that had been hit by an overcharge shot from a plasma pistol. "Corona! Reset the system! I'm going manual!"

" _Fuel rod!_ " Noble suddenly yelled and startled, Tariq glanced through his backup sights to see a Grunt standing up from a hole less than a hundred meters away, fuel rod cannon on his shoulder point right at Lillian. _"I'm suppressing!"_

Tariq could hear Noble bringing her SMG to bear, and he hastily began spinning the wheel that would turn his turret, trying to bring his coax to bear. As he worked, Noble opened fire, emptying an entire magazine in the Grunt's direction. Tariq wasn't a hundred percent certain, but he was pretty sure he saw the Grunt get hit in the head by the last round. Nevertheless, as soon as his screens turned back on as a result of Corona successfully resetting the system, Tariq popped a HEAT round into one of his guns and locked onto the crater.

"Firing main gun!" Tariq roared at Noble in warning, and waited until she had ducked back inside before pulling the trigger. "On the way!"

The crater vanished in a wave of dirt and mud. As the debris came crashing back down to the ground again, Tariq glanced around for another target, only to see the rest of the attacking Covenant had all been killed.

But that didn't mean the fight was over...

 _ **SWOOOSHH... KABOOM! SWOOOOSHHH...KABOOM!**_

"Incoming plasma mortars! Take cover!" Noble yelled. "All units, keep your eyes peeled for infiltrators!"

Their radio suddenly crackled to life.

 _"07, this 06, over!"_

Tariq could see Noble grabbing her mic.

"This is 07, go ahead!" she said, wincing as a particularly vicious explosion went off nearby. "This 07, go ahead!"

 _"07, Covies are launching an attack on our eastern flank! 05 is requesting reinforcements! Take half your section, and go and reinforce him!"_

"Wilco! 07 to 3-1!"

 _"Go ahead."_

"3-1, we're getting outflanked from the east! Lock this sector down, I'm taking Dragoon 2-3 with me to go reinforce Cataphract-1's position!"

 _"Understood!"_

"07 to Dragoon 2-3, mount up, we're moving out! Driver, move us out!"

Tariq immediately braced himself as Corona instantly threw the tank into reverse and backed out of their hull-down position and started to head towards the eastern side of town. But before they could travel more than a few meters, there was a tremendous explosions from behind them, and Tariq swiveled his optics around to see their former fighting position had just taken a direct hit from a plasma mortar.

"Fucking mortars," Tariq spat under his breath. "Goddamn plasma! Seriously, can't we get some counter-battery action going on!?"

He knew it was impossible though, simply because no one knew where those mortar Wraiths were. When the Covenant decided to park a couple of battlecruisers in orbit directly over the city of Byzas, all aerial assets, including reconnaissance drone, had been immediately pulled back, least they instantly get shot out of the sky. And even though the cruisers had left, it was going to take some time before the UNSC was able to recapture some of the territory they had lost.

In the meantime, all Tariq could do was hang on as Corona deftly maneuvered his way through the shattered and debris covered streets, doing his best to avoid taking a direct hit from a plasma mortar.

"05, this 07, en route to your location, ETA: ninety seconds," Noble rattled off on the radio as they drove. "Sitrep, over?"

 _"Covies attempted to bypass our position entirely and get behind us, but we were able to put a stop to that with artillery!"_ the company executive officer immediately yelled back. _"But we couldn't stop them all and I think a small scouting force managed to make it through! In the meantime though, we've got contacts; a lot of contacts!"_

"Copy that," Noble smoothly replied. "I'll alert our support battalion to be on the alert for enemy infiltrators. In the meantime, we need to hold our position!"

 _"I agree! Need you to come reinforce our position! Be advised though: our fixed defenses haven't been fully set up yet, so watch yourselves!"_

"Understood. 07, out. Alright guys, did you guys hear that?" Noble asked as soon as she put down her radio. "Bravo Section's fix fortifications haven't been built yet, so we might be stuck out in the open. Keep your eyes peeled; we're going to need to be fully alert for this one!"

"Got it!" Corona replied whereas Tariq merely grunted in reply.

They turned the corner and finally arrived at the frontline, where Tariq was able to see what 05 had meant when he said their fix fortifications hadn't been established just yet: unlike the position Tariq and the others had just left, 1st Platoon only had a couple of hull-down positions prepared, but even then they were only halfway excavated. He could see a handful of engineers from their engineer support company frantically working on digging more holes for the rest of the tanks, even as plasma and explosions went off around them, but in the meantime, the rest of the tanks had to fight out on open ground. The result was turning out to be a rather costly battle for the UNSC: Bravo Section and 1st Platoon had originally consisted of seven vehicles, but now only about half of those remained functional. Tariq could see why this position desperately needed reinforcements.

"Dragoon 2-3, deploy infantry! Spread out and find a fighting position," Noble ordered over the radio. "Driver, you see that blue abandoned car in front of us?"

"Yes First Sergeant!"

"Park us right behind that bitch. We'll use it for cover."

"That's not exactly a fortified car First Sergeant," Tariq pointed out as Corona moved into position. "Kind of like trying to hide an elephant behind a molehill."

"We don't have any other option," Noble tersely pointed out. "Without any defenses, the only thing we can do is to try and outshoot the Covenant. Gunner! Standby to engage!"

In response, Tariq switched off his safety.

"Target! Enemy Hunter three five nine meters, one zero one degrees!"

"On the way!"

Tariq pulled the trigger but before he could even so much as register a hit, the Covenant immediately zeroed in on their position and returned fire, and Tariq could feel his eyes widen as three fuel rod cannons shot towards him.

"INCOMING!"

 _ **BOOSHHHH!**_

The first fuel rod slammed into the car Lillian was trying to hide behind, blowing it up and setting the remains on fire. The second fuel rod landed a few meters short of the tank, bouncing off the ground and hitting Lillian's front left skirt cover, but at that point much of the fuel rod's energy had been lost so it failed to do much damage.

The third fuel rod cannon however...

The entire tank shook and something hot shot right over Tariq's left shoulder. It would have hit him right in the chest had he not reflexively moved to the side to activate the tank's smoke dispenser to try to hide Lillian from view.

Looking back, Tariq noticed a neat little hole burned into the back of his chair, and tracing its path back to the wall, Tariq spotted a small hole, with a diameter about the size of his pinky, which had been burned through the turret mantle. It took him a few seconds to realize what it was: the third fuel rod cannon had scored a direct hit against a weakened armor plate on their turret, sending a narrow stream of concentrated plasma right through the plate and into the tank. By some miracle, the stream had just managed to avoid hitting anything vital, but if Tariq had actually been seated properly, the stream would have burned right through his body armor and into his chest, potentially killing him.

Glancing up at Noble, Tariq could see a horrified look on her face, indicating she had seen the same thing he had.

"Fuck, that was close," he heard her mutter before she grabbed her headset. "Driver! Keep us moving! We can't be standing still right now! Keep us moving! Gunner, pick up your rate of fire! I'm calling in a rocket strike!"

Tariq nodded and jammed his face back into his optics, doing his best to try and not think about how close to death he had been just now. In the meantime, behind him, he could hear Noble saying,

"Steel Rain, this is Cataphract! Requesting immediate fire support at grid location Zulu Charlie, one seven six three, five seven seven five, direction zero nine one! Enemy armor in the open, DPICM is in effect! All batteries, FIRE FOR EFFECT!"

While Noble was busy calling in their rocket artillery support, Tariq in the meantime was busy trying to maintain his rate of fire. It was proving slightly more difficult than he was used to thanks to Corona's frantic attempts at evasive maneuvering, but fortunately his turret's barrel stabilizers were still working meaning Tariq wasn't that adversely affected.

Dropping his crosshairs over a nearby Hunter, Tariq fired a SABOT round right at his chest, looking for a kill but unfortunately, the Hunter was able to raise his shield up in time to block the shot. While the composite rod did cause the Hunter's shield to break, the Hunter itself was left unscathed and in retaliation, the Hunter lifted his arm cannon and fired back.

 _ **BOOOOSSSHHH!**_

Fortunately, due to Corona's efforts, the radioactive stream missed, and Tariq quickly fired a HEAT shell at the Hunter's now exposed chest.

The shell exploded, destroying the Hunter's armor and leaving the creature heavily wounded, but alive, and Tariq was in the process of loading a couple more rounds when a pair of shells fired by another tank smashed into the Hunter. The Hunter was blown apart, orange goo showering the field.

Undeterred, Tariq spun around, looking for another target. He spotted an assault Wraith exchanging fire with some other vehicle in the line, and Tariq decided to lend his support. Adjusting his aim, Tariq fired, but just he did, the Wraith took a hit to the side which disabled its left gravity stabilizer.

The Wraith went crashing into the ground at an awkward angle, resulting in Tariq's shell passing right over the tank's turret as it missed. Biting back a curse, Tariq adjusted his aim and sent another shell downrange, and watched as the Wraith's hull cave in moments before the entire vehicle exploded.

"Banshees, up high!" Noble suddenly called out. "Driver, evade!"

Tariq glanced skyward to see another flight of Banshees emerge from the clouds once again. Tracers immediately began filling the air around them, but rounds weren't enough to deter the Banshees as they visibly prepared to dive into a strafing run.

But just as the lead Banshee started to dive, it was abruptly struck by a rocket from above, knocking it out of the sky and sending it spiraling to the ground where it landed amongst an entire squad of Covenant infantry that had been in the middle of getting deployed from their Shadow APC. The crippled Banshee ploughed right into the Shadow, causing both vehicles to explode, with the ensuing fireball consuming all of the assembled infantry.

"AHAHAHA!" Tariq couldn't help burst out laughing, both at the sight and at the realization the rocket that had destroyed the Banshee had actually been fired by their multiple rocket launcher support from nearly forty klicks away. "That's why you don't fly fucking aircraft through the same airspace artillery is dropping down on, ya dumb fucks!"

More 227mm rockets exploded right over the heads of the Covenant. Each rocket was armed with a cluster munition warhead and when they exploded, they sent hundreds of smaller bombs scattering across the battlefield. The bombs by themselves were hardly strong enough to destroy even the lightest of Covenant vehicles, but their presence was enough to delay the Covenant advance long enough for the tanks of Bravo Section to finish the fight.

"Target! Enemy infantry in the open!" Noble screamed.

"Yeah, I see 'em!" Tariq yelled back. "Switching to canister!"

He thumbed a few buttons and as he waited for one of his cannons to reload, he switched over to his coax, firing a few quick burst at the Covenant infantry running around, sending them diving to the ground for cover.

"Gun up!" he roared as soon as his status light turned green. "On the way!"

Tariq pulled the trigger but just he did, Corona went over a bump. The bump wasn't that big, but it was enough to jar Tariq's turret, causing his shell to miss his target entirely.

"What the fuck dude!?"

"Sorry!" Corona called back, sounding a bit distracted. "Trying... to... concentrate!"

"Driver, you're doing fine," Noble assured him. "Gunner, shut the fuck up and keep firing!"

Tariq snarled but rather than snap back, he decided to take his frustrations out on the Covenant, viciously pulling the trigger and watching with grim satisfaction as a 120mm HEAT shell hit an Elite Major right in the head, ripping it clean off his shoulders and causing an almost comical amount of blood to go gushing into the air as his body toppled to the ground.

 _"Cataphract, this is Steel Rain, rounds complete, over."_

"Copy that!" Noble yelled back. "Break, break! Cataphract to Ballista 1-1, requesting immediate fire support at fire concentration echo through foxtrot! HE, fifteen rounds, all guns, fire for effect!"

The 227mm rockets suddenly stopped coming, but it was only but a few seconds before they were replaced by a shower of 120mm mortars fired by their assigned self-propelled mortar support from less than ten klicks away. The heavy mortars landed amongst the Covenant forces, tearing armor and infantry to shreds and leaving massive craters in their wake.

"Go get them stovepipe boys," Tariq muttered under his breath as he dropped his crosshairs over one of the last remaining Wraith tanks and sent a HEAT shell in his direction.

The Wraith started to move out of the way, but abruptly took a direct hit from one of the mortars. The mortar slammed into the hull just above where the pilot was located, and there was just enough time for Tariq to see the blue flames that started to shoot out before his shell hit and turned the rest of the Wraith into a blazing inferno.

"Infantry in the open!" Noble bellowed, even as Covenant plasma mortars began bombarding their position once more. "Fire fire fire!"

Lillian recoiled as Tariq sent a canister round in the direction of a large group of Covenant soldiers. His shell fell a bit short, landing about a meter and a half in front of the group, but it was still close enough the shrapnel was able to knock most of them to the ground like they were nothing more than a bunch of bowling pins. The survivors struggled to their feet, but then three mortars landed around them in quick succession, leaving their shredded bodies to bleed out on the muddy ground.

"Ballista, Cataphract. Added thirty, left five three, and repeat fire mission!" Noble ordered over the radio. "Sweep the rest of the field! Break; 07 to all Bravo Section victors, cease firing! Conserve your ammo and let the artillery do the work!"

Tariq eased up on his trigger but before he could even begin to think about relaxing, their radio came to life.

 _"06 to 07!"_ Lightfoot's voice sounded over the radio.

"Go ahead 06," Noble replied, with just barely a hint of weariness in her voice.

 _"07, we're getting outflanked to the west! Alpha Section needs help! Head over to the western flank and lend your support, over!"_

"Copy that 06, we're en-route!"

Glancing over at her crew, Noble gestured at them. "Move it out driver!"

"Man, what the hell?" Tariq groused, even as he jammed another two shells into his cannon. "Why the hell are we the only ones getting shuffled around like this?"

"Probably because I'm the First Sergeant, and that's my job?" Noble dryly suggested.

"Silly me. And here I thought a first sergeant was a staff position!" Tariq retorted, wincing as a plasma mortar landed nearby. "And not an extra ground pounder who was expected to have his ass hanging out in the wind, waiting for it to get blown off by a fucking mortar!"

"We all got to do what we got to do!" Noble snapped. "And if that means we got to go reinforce a position, we go reinforce a fucking position!"

Tariq grounded his teeth together but kept his mouth shut as Corona once again began making his way through town, dodging even more mortars. So far they had been lucky in the fact they had yet to take a hit from one of those things, but if they kept driving through town the way they were, it was only going to be a matter of time before their luck ran out.

Still, what could Tariq do? He was the gunner and at this point, that meant he was just along for the ride.

At they start to approach Alpha Section's position, Noble switched the channels on the radio and all of a suddenly, Tariq could hear the 2nd Platoon commander saying, _"Longbow, this is Cataphract 2-1, bring it in close! Drop two five and fire for effect!"_

The ground began to shake as 155mm shells began screaming in. Tariq mentally began to prepare himself to open fire the moment he saw a Covenant vehicle, but before their tank could even come within sight of the line, Lightfoot suddenly came onto the radio again.

 _"07 this is 06, belay last order!"_ he hastily bellow. _"Divert to the northern line! Covenant are launching another attack!"_

"Copy! But what about Alpha Section?"

 _"I'll reinforce them myself! Just get your ass to the northern flank!"_

"Affirmative, on the way!" Noble snapped back and without waiting for the order, Corona twisted his wheel and started to head back to their original position.

"That doesn't sound good," Tariq worriedly commented to himself.

"Yeah, no kidding," Noble commented before switching on her radio. "07 to 3 Actual, status?"

 _"Status is we're fucked!"_ came the immediate reply. _"I've got a battalion sized unit of Covenant armor pounding my position, and I'm down to two tanks! Need reinforcements, ASAP!"_

"We're working on it! 07, out! Driver, let's pick up the pace!"

Corona nodded, and hit the gas. Upon reaching the northern flank, he quickly eased their tank into an available hull-down position, and Tariq hurriedly scanned the field. As was reported, there was about a battalion's worth of Covenant armor, backed by air and artillery, making their way across the field. Rockets, tank shells, and heavy machine rounds were crisscrossing the battlefield, but the Covenant were using the burning corpses of their comrades from the first attack for cover.

"Targets in the open!" Noble hollered, even as Tariq open fired. "Ballista, Cataphract! Requesting immediate fire support on fire concentration Bravo, over?"

 _"Cataphract, Ballista. Negative fire support, all guns currently engaged!"_

"Fuck!" Noble spat.

"First Sergeant! Try Havoc again!" Tariq suggested.

"Covenant are a little too close for 203's, don't you think!?"

Tariq winced as a fuel rod cannon, one fired by a Grunt and not a Wraith or Hunter, hit the ground nearby. "I don't think we have much of a choice!"

"Okay! Cataphract 07 to Havoc, fire mission!"

Tariq could hear Noble yelling into the radio, but he ignored her as he searched for more targets. The first thing he spotted was a small Ghost, looking decidedly out of place on a field full of tanks. Nevertheless, the Ghost zipped across the field, cannons blazing, and Tariq could see his infantry support ducking for cover as plasma splattered around them.

 _"This Dragoon 2-2 Alpha!"_ Tariq heard his friend Chenko call out over the radio. _"Someone take out that Ghost!"_

"On it!" Tariq called back as spun his turret around and opened up with his coax. Even from this distance, he could see his bullets pinging off the nose of the Ghost, but the Ghost continued forward, undeterred. Tariq was about to reluctantly expend an entire tank round, when one of Chenko's men sudden rose up with a Jackhammer rocket launcher on his shoulder and fired right at the Ghost. The 102mm rocket slammed into the Ghost, turning it into a fireball.

"Shot, out!" Noble hollered. "Head's up Charlie, we've got friendly arty incoming, danger close!"

Almost as soon as she said that, 203mm artillery shells came whistling in, landing not even two hundred meters away. Buried inside a heavy tank, such a close strike was hardly a concern for Tariq, but even then, he could still hear the shrieking of shrapnel as it hurtled through the air. Yet, the Covenant still came.

"Target! Foot mobiles with heavy weapons, in the open! Hit them with an airburst!"

Chewing on his lip, Tariq rapidly set the warhead on his next shell.

"On the way!" he yelled and watched as the shell explode right over the spot Noble had pointed out. He couldn't see if he had gotten the kill though, as other targets demanded his attention.

"First Sergeant, Covenant are getting closer," he warning.

"Yeah, I'm on it! Cataphract 07 to Havoc, drop seven five and repeat fire mission!"

 _"Uh, negative fire support. All guns are currently supporting Cataphract 05, over."_

"Understood. 07, out. Fuck!" Noble snapped as she tossed her radio down. "We need some more fire support! Sergeant, do we have any more artillery batteries in the AO?"

"Should be some Actium Army batteries somewhere around here," Tariq reported. "But I don't know their call signs!"

He could hear her swearing again, but he ignored her as he searched for more targets. He spotted a Hunter taking cover behind a destroyed Wraith who was firing his arm cannon so much, even from here, Tariq could see the barrel was red hot.

Loading up his main gun, Tariq fired both barrels in rapid succession. The first shell, a HEAT round, smashed into the destroyed Wraith and exploded, blowing a hole through the weakened armor. The second shell, a SABOT dart, passed through the hole seconds later and slammed into the Hunter, ripping of armored plating and shredding his arm cannon. Startled, the Hunter stumbled out of cover, and Tariq quickly switched over to his RWS, firing over a hundred heavy machine gun rounds into the wounded Hunter before he collapsed.

"Got it!" Noble suddenly and triumphantly yelled. "Hornet, a towed 155 battery, and Stinger, a MLRS battery, both of the Actium Army!"

"Better go with the 155's!" Tariq urged.

"I agree! Hornet, this Cataphract 07, fire support WARNO incoming, do you copy? Requesting immediate fire support at grid location Hotel November one six one, four five niner, direction three seven one! Enemy armor in the open! Requesting one HE spotting round. Be advised, this is a danger close strike, over!"

 _"Cataphract 07, we copy your traffic. Shot, over."_

"Shot, out!" Noble lowered her radio. "Hey Sergeant! I got a spotting round incoming! Help me look for it and adjust as needed!"

"Copy!"

Tariq began randomly spraying down the area in front of him with his coax as he waited for the artillery to arrive.

 _"07, splash, over."_

Tariq looked around and just barely managed to spot a mound of dirt getting thrown into the air as the shell exploded a couple dozen meters behind where the vast majority of the Covenant were located.

"Hey! First Sergeant! You're shooting too far! Drop, uh, drop three seventy and uh... left one six!"

"Drop three seven zero, left one six," Noble repeated over the radio. "And fire for effect!"

More artillery started falling, this time on target. However, it didn't even seem to faze the Covenant. And to make things worse -

 _"Bravo Section to all call signs, be advised, our eastern flank is under attack. Requesting immediate reinforcements, over."_

 _"Negative!"_ Lightfoot roared over the radio before anyone else could reply. _"All reserves are currently engaged! All call signs be advised, we are being attacked from all directions. All units, hold your position!"_

"Oh fuck," Tariq muttered to himself. If all sides were under attack and all reserves were currently engaged, that meant if the Covenant managed to break through on any of the flanks, then it would be all over for everyone as there would simply be no way to hold them back.

"Keep firing, keep firing!" Noble urged. "We got to keep the Covenant back!"

"I'm trying!" Tariq desperately yelled back, trying to prioritize the most dangerous targets but with so many Covenant at such a close distance, it was getting increasingly harder to do.

"Christ, look at them! They just keep coming!" Tariq heard Corona yelling and in some ways, Tariq couldn't blame him. There was almost something to be admired about the way the Covenant forces continued to fearlessly, and blindly, charge forward straight into the UNSC's guns. Tariq doubted a human unit would have been able to accomplish the same thing with as much fervor.

Of course, he doubted a UNSC unit would have been stupid enough to put themselves in a position where they needed to, so there was that...

Noble suddenly started cursing.

"RWS is dry, got to reload!" she screamed. "Gunner! Pick up your rate of fire!"

"Fuck!" Tariq yelped as Noble disappeared out of the turret. He could just barely catch sight of her outside, desperately shoving a new belt into the ammo can. "Driver! Break out your personal defense weapon!"

"My what?"

"Your damn SMG! Break it out and prepare for close quarters combat!"

A fuel rod cannon exploded nearby, showering the tank with dirt and Tariq fired a snap shot in the direction the fuel rod had roughly come from. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Corona staring at him with a fearful look on his face.

"There's nowhere to retreat for us, and no one else to reinforce us!" Tariq yelled, answering the un-voiced question. "If we can't hold them back with the main guns, then we're going to have to be prepared to stand our ground with small arms!"

A sickened look appeared on Corona's face before it was quickly replaced by a grim look of determination, and he slowly pulled out his SMG. In the meantime, Tariq continued to fire as soon as his cannons reloaded, but it was getting to be too much. He wasn't sure how much longer he could maintain this rate of fire.

 _"Lancer Actual to all UNSC call signs in the vicinity of the town of Newington!"_

Tariq swiftly looked up at that call over the radio. That was the battalion commander.

 _"All call signs, mark your positions with transponder beacons and standby for FPF, break! Lancer to all UNSC artillery units in the vicinity of Objective Zippo, FPF WARNO incoming! Targeting grid coordinates being transmitted to each individual call sign. All call signs, confirm recipient of targeting grid coordinates, over!"_

 _"Stinger to Lancer, reception confirmed, over."_

 _"Ballista to Lancer, reception confirmed, over."_

 _"This is Havoc to Lancer, confirmed, over."_

As all artillery batteries continued to confirm targeting coordinates, another voice cut in over the radio.

 _"This is Cataphract Actual to all Cataphract commanders and staff!"_ Lightfoot yelled. _"Sound off! Confirm deployment of beacons and verify your locations, over!"_

Tariq could hear Noble swiftly sliding back into the turret and hit a few buttons as all platoons began checking in.

 _"This is 01, we're in position!"_

 _"This is 05, standing by!"_

 _"2-2 to Actual: in position!"_

"This is 07," Noble announced over the radio. "Position confirmed."

 _"This is 03: confirmed."_

 _"06: in position. Cataphract to Lancer, all Cataphract positions marked and confirmed, over!"_

 _"Understood! All positions marked and confirmed. Lancer to all UNSC batteries: FIRE FOR EFFECT!"_

 _ **BABOOM! BABOOM! BABOOM!**_

It was as if the very sky had opened up, allowing the gods to unleash their fury on the ground below. The very ground was torn asunder as five separate artillery batteries and a single mortar platoon simply opened up with everything they had, firing everything from 114mm unguided rockets, to 120mm mortars, to 155mm white phosphorus rounds, to 203mm HE shells, creating an almost literal ring of fire around the entire town. And yet, that _still_ wasn't enough to deter the Covenant.

 _"All gunners, maintain fire!"_ Lightfoot yelled over the radio as the Covenant continued to charge forward like they were merely taking a stroll through a slight drizzle, as opposed to a firestorm of biblical proportions.

"Target!" Noble screamed to be heard over the roar of explosions. "Enemy Hunter, direct twelve, one three zero meters!"

Tariq squinted, doing his best to see through all the dirt and smoke getting thrown into the air before spotting the target: charging straight towards them was a single Hunter. The Hunter was already bleeding from multiple shrapnel wounds, but still kept coming with an air of rabid fanaticism.

"On the way!"

Tariq pulled the trigger, blowing the Hunter apart

"Target! Wraith, one zero zero meters!

"On the way!

Lillian's main cannons recoiled as a HEAT shell was hurtled in the Covenant's direction.

"Target! Ghost, nine five meters!"

"On the way!"

The Ghost exploded as it was simultaneously hit by a 120mm canister round and possibly a 40mm SABOT shell.

"Target! Enemy infantry, in the open, seven five meters!"

Tariq pulled the trigger, but instead of feeling recoil, all he heard was a loud _clung_ and alarms began to shrill.

"Malfunction!" he shrieked. "Switching to coax!"

"Getting the fifty!" Noble yelled back. "Driver, small arms! Standby to defend yourself!"

Corona pulled out his SMG, but Tariq hardly noticed. Instead, he was panning his turret left and right, firing his coaxial machine gun nonstop. He wasn't even sure what he was shooting at anymore, all he knew was just to keep shooting.

All across his display, alarms began to sound, warning him his barrel was rapidly overheating and that he was seconds away from running out of ammo. But Tariq ignored them all as he continued to hold down the trigger. And then, all of a sudden -

 _\- click -_

His firing pin fell on an empty chamber, and just as it did, everything went silent. Not just his coax, but the artillery, the explosions, the incoming plasma, the screaming Covenant, _**everything**_.

Feeling as if he was in a daze all of a sudden, Tariq uncertainly looked around. Everything appeared to still be in place. He was sitting at station inside Lillian, with Corona sitting in the driver's seat in front of him, and Noble sitting in her spot behind him, both looking as confused as he felt.

"What... just happened?" Tariq couldn't help but ask, feeling rather dumb for doing so, but needing to shake that surreal feeling that had suddenly descended upon him.

"The Covenant just broke off their attack," Noble slowly replied, sounding befuddled.

"What? Why would they do that?"

"I don't know?"

Almost as if by impulse, Noble reached up, popped open the hatch to the tank, and pulled herself out.

After a moment of hesitation, Tariq quickly followed her, climbing to the top of the turret. Around him, the remaining members of Cataphract and Dragoon companies were following suit, climbing out the holes that had been their homes for the last hour or so.

Almost as one, they gazed across the shattered battlefield, passed all the bodies and the destroyed Covenant vehicles, to the other side of the field where they could just barely make out the edge of the city of Byzas. There was absolutely no movement to be seen. Even the plasma mortars that had been bombarding the town had fallen silent.

"Where'd all the Covenant go?" Corona asked, his voice wavering ever so slightly.

"I have no idea," Noble began, before simply trailing off and staring off across the field. "I have no idea…"

For a few moments, everyone just stood there, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Eventually though, Noble shook her head.

"Well," she said, "I have no idea what's going on, but it looks like the Covenant are giving us a reprieve. Let's not waste it. TCs! I want a fuel and ammo count! Engineers and tank crews! Start reinforcing your fighting positions. The Covenant might have broken off for the moment but rest assured, they _will_ be back. And when they do…

…nothing's going to be able to stop them."

* * *

For anyone that is curious, this is what I envisioned all the artillery support in this chapter as being:

\- As mentioned, Havoc is supposed to be a battery of 203mm self-propelled howitzer assigned directly to the division level. The vehicle I picture them using would be the M145 "Rhino," a canon from Halo Wars 1. Though, instead of the "D" model which, like its actual appearance in the game is equipped with a plasma cannon, this version would be the "A" model, an older vehicle obviously equipped with a 203mm howitzer

\- Bowman is supposed to be a platoon of self-propelled antiaircraft guns assigned to the battalion level (as depicted in chapter 15.) The vehicle they use is supposed to be the M808B2 Air Defense System, a canon vehicle that is equipped with two, dual-barrel 40mm autocannons, similar to the real-world Russian 2K22 Tunguska. (Not part of the canon vehicle are the Argent anti-air missiles; those I added.) **(Also, it's only similar to the Tunguska in terms of** _ **weaponry**_ **. In terms of appearance, the M808B2 looks more like the Russian ZSU-23-4 Shilka, just with a shorter turret.)**

\- Steel Rain is intended to be a corps level multiple rocket launcher. In appearance, I picture it as being similar to the US Army's M270 MLRS (equipped with eighteen tubes of 227mm unguided rockets,) only built on top of a M808 Scorpion chassis, as opposed to an M993 carrier vehicle (which would probably make it look closer to the TOS-1 of the modern Russian Army)

\- Ballista 1-1 is intended to be a 120mm heavy mortar platoon assigned directly to Tariq's battalion HQ. Vehicle would be an M808 Scorpion, with the turret from the real world Finnish/Swedish AMOS

\- Longbow is intended to be 2nd Brigade's (Tariq's unit) assigned battery of self-propelled artillery. I envisioned their vehicles to be similar to the real-world German Army Panzerhaubitze 2000 self-propelled howitzer, only mounted on the chassis of an M808 Scorpion

\- Hornet, as mentioned in the chapter, is a battery of 155m towed howitzers assigned to the Actium Army. The howitzers they're using I imagine as being an automatic towed howitzer, similar to the real-world Haubits FH77 of the Swedish Army, or the FH-2000 of the Singaporean Army.

\- and finally, Stinger, as mentioned in the chapter, is an Actium Army MLRS utilizing the canon vehicle, the M9 "Wolverine" (from Halo Wars) and firing 114mm rockets, similar to the real-world BM-21 "Grad," formerly of the Soviet Union.

As you can see, about half of the vehicles are based on canon vehicles, the other half based on real-world weapons. If anyone is interested in seeing what they look like, for all the real-world stuff, their English Wikipedia pages have pictures, while Halopedia should be able to cover all the canon vehicles.


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter 21**

 **Camp Hoxha, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
1218**

 **Marcus**

"Marcus, leave the engine running but put the Rig in park and come with me," Dresden immediately ordered as Marcus pulled into the warehouse and was instantly swarmed by a crowd of Army quartermasters. "Orlović, you too!"

Marcus hastily obeyed, throwing the Rig into park and popping open the door. This time, making sure to grab his rifle, Marcus ran after Dresden and Orlović, catching up with them a few meters away.

"What's going on?" Marcus heard Orlović asked as he caught up to them.

"Sergeant Scott needs to brief us on our next run," Dresden reported without breaking stride.

"Who's Sergeant Scott?" Marcus couldn't help but ask.

"Platoon Sergeant," Dresden bluntly replied.

Marcus nodded in understanding. With the platoon commander having been killed on their way to the airport the platoon sergeant was now in charge of what was left of the platoon, if Marcus remembered his military command structure correctly.

They joined the rest of the HEMTT crews as they formed a rough semicircle around the platoon sergeant.

"We've got the location of our next supply run and it's going to be a doozy," Scott announced without preamble. She activated hologram revealing, what Marcus presumed, was a map of the general area. "Right here, in the town of Newington. If you were to exit out due south of the city of Byzas, Newington would be the first town you hit. This is the place the Covenant need to capture in order to continue their advance south and out of their landing site. Fortunately for us, a tank unit from the UNSC Army managed to capture the town first and having been holding out against repeated Covenant attempts to dislodge them. Unfortunately for us, those tankers are running out of ammo, fast. I trust you all know where I'm going with this?"

Marcus did, unfortunately, and even if he didn't, he would have been able to figure it out from all the scared and horrified looks on his platoon-mates' faces.

"As of right now, the HEMTTs are getting loaded up with all supplies and ammo those tankers are going to need for extended operations," Scott continued. "Mostly ammo and fuel. Every truck will be carrying a bed-full of tank shells, a pallet of machine gun ammo, and a trailer of fuel hooked up to the vehicles. That's going to be a lot of weight, probably going to overload our vehicles, but Command has deemed it worth it so do your best to try and not flip your vehicles when you turn."

"Now, obviously our location is going to put us really close to the frontlines. Which means we might take some fire. Might even encounter some enemy contacts. We're going to be traveling with a military police unit, but they're intended to act as reinforcements for those tankers, so don't count on them for help; we're essentially going to need to depend on ourselves for protection."

Marcus noticed Dresden raising his hand.

"We got any recon of the area so that we know what we're getting into?" Dresden asked. "Satellite, aerial surveillance, that sort of thing?"

Scott shook her head. "We've gotten some reports from those tankers that some of the Covenant might have broken through their line, but how many of them and in what strength, we don't know. It can't be that much though, probably nothing more than a couple of patrols."

Marcus could see Dresden frowning. "But, we don't know for certain, do we? So... we could be driving into an ambush for all we know."

"Pretty much," Scott admitted and as fearful murmurs broke out, Scott hastily added, "But Command doesn't think that's going to happen. As of right now, the Covenant invasion force appears to have shifted the weight of their attack up north, to the city of Byzas."

"What for?" someone asked.

"No idea. Preliminary reports seem to suggest the Covenant have gone into a search pattern, as if they're looking for something inside the city itself, but without any aerial surveillance, no one knows for sure."

Marcus frowned to himself as murmurs broke out. The Covenant were searching for something? Like what? What could be inside the city that was valuable enough to capture the attention of an entire Covenant army?

"At any case!" Scott continued in a louder voice to be heard over the crowd. "At any case, the point is, all Covenant units are currently preoccupied with other objectives. Supply trucks like us will not be a priority for them."

Somehow, Marcus didn't feel assured in the least bit, and he found himself involuntarily hugging his rifle closer to him. As if that would help.

"Nevertheless, we'll try and move as fast as possible," Scott continued, "to try and minimize our exposure. However, our best bet is to rely on each other. I need everyone's head on swivel: keep your eyes peels and stay frosty. You see something, say something. Remember: it's not just your life on the line today, but everyone else's. Stay alert. Got it?"

Marcus nodded.

"Okay. Everyone, get some ammo and then go refit and refuel your rigs. We move out in fifteen. Dismissed."

Murmurs broke out as the entire group separated and broke into individual teams. Marcus felt himself shivering with fear as he jogged after Dresden and Orlović. He wasn't sure if Scott's intention had been to scare them or reassure them, but her little speech had definitely left Marcus shaken to the core.

Underlying his fear though, was a strong sense of frustration. This exact situation was the main reason Marcus had been so reluctant to join the military in the first place, and one of the things he'd been hoping to avoid once he had been forced in. Well, okay, maybe not this _exact_ situation, but similar to it, one where he, a very poorly trained soldier, was expected to standing against the best the Covenant Empire had to offer. This was so not fair.

"Orlović, grab a cart and head to the armory and get as many cans of ammo as you can get," Dresden was saying in the meantime. "If we do run into any Covenant patrols, I want to make sure we have enough ammo to fight them off. Worst comes to worst, we can always give them to the tankers; never met a tanker who thought he had _too_ much ammo before."

"I kind of wish we had something heavier," Orlović replied. "You know, like a forty Mike Mike automatic grenade launcher. Or a fifty cal. Man, I would love a fifty cal."

"So would I. But, I doubt we would be able to get our hands on one of those," Dresden agreed. "In the meantime, Marcus and me will head over to the Rig and see if we can't help the Q-tips speed things up. We'll met back at the Rig in seven."

"Got it," Orlović said before dashing off.

"Come on Marcus," Dresden said, gesturing for him to follow.

They hurried over to the main bay where all the HEMTTs were parked. The place was crowded now, as the quartermasters had pallets of shells stacked all over the place, which a couple of Cyclops were in the process of loading onto the vehicles. At the same time, dozens of other soldiers were busy with other tasks, with some working on strapping down all the cargo the Cyclops were loading, others hitching trailers of fuel to the back of the HEMTTS, and while others still were doing some minor repairs to some of the vehicles. It was one giant, chaotic mess.

Marcus hurriedly followed in Dresden's footsteps as he deftly made his way through the crowd and towards the Rig. Ignoring the mechanics that were busy refueling their HEMTT, Dresden marched over to the cab and popped open a small box mounted on the side.

"Here, take this," Dresden ordered, pulling out a couple of empty water bags. "Head over to the bathrooms over there and get us some water. And while you're at it..."

He glanced around to see if anyone was paying attention before pulling out a small bag and handing it over to Marcus. Leaning in close, he said in a much quieter voice, "While you're at it, you might want to consider cleaning yourself off."

Marcus immediately felt his cheeks begin to redden with embarrassment and shame. He had been hoping no one had noticed his little "accident."

"No no," Dresden quickly said upon noticing Marcus' embarrassment. "There's no need to be ashamed dude. What happened to you is merely a natural response to being thrown into a high stress situation like you were. It happens to the best of us, right?"

All Marcus could do was awkwardly nod his head in agreement.

"But I realize not everyone else will see it that way," Dresden continued. "So... we'll just keep this between us, yeah?"

Marcus felt a surge of gratitude towards his team leader.

"Thank you Sergeant," he emphatically said.

Dresden shrugged. "Don't worry about it. Just... you know, be quick about it. We don't have a lot of time."

Marcus nodded, and then headed off towards the restroom. Making sure no one was looking, he ducked into the men's room and into one of the stalls, making sure to lock the door behind him. Once he felt he was safe, he went to work.

Propping his rifle up against the stall door, Marcus took a look inside Dresden's bag. It had everything he would need: a towel, a small bar of soap, a small disposable bag, and even a spare pair of trousers, which looked to be a size too big but Marcus wasn't complaining. He could only hope no one noticed the size difference and if they did, they would have the sense not to ask about it.

Kicking off his boots, Marcus dropped his pants, grabbed a handful of toilet paper, and set about cleaning the mess as best he could. Honestly, he couldn't believe this had happened. Despite the reassurances Dresden had given him, Marcus still couldn't help feel ashamed for what had happened; Marcus knew he wasn't prepared for a situation like this, both physically and mentally, but this just proved how very, VERY, unprepared he actually was.

Cleaning himself off, Marcus tossed his ruined pants into the disposable bag and quickly dressed himself. Making sure he had his rifle (because he was never, EVER, forget that again,) Marcus exited the stall and tossed the bag into the nearest trash can before walking over to the sink to wash his hands. As he did, he happened to glance at the mirror and was shocked by what he saw.

Perhaps it was all psychological, but despite having on been in combat for a couple of hours at most, Marcus could almost swear it looked as if he had already aged by ten years or more. His face was covered in all sorts of soot and grime, he had bags forming under his eyes, and his eyes themselves were beginning to look a little bloodshot. In short, he was a mess.

Splashing some water on his face, Marcus went about cleaning his face all the while at the same time, tried to not think about everything he'd seen so far. All the bodies and all the terror. All the horror. Marcus was beginning to truly appreciate why soldiers always seemed to come out of a battle completely fucked up in the head.

The worst thing about it all though, was Marcus knew he had only seen a fraction of the terror that awaited him. And that things were only going to get much _much_ worse from this point forward.

Drying his face off, Marcus stared at his own reflection. "I can do this," he told himself. "I can do this. I HAVE to do this. There's too much at stake here for me to screw this up. I can do this."

His reflection somehow didn't look all that convinced by his pep talk.

Shaking his head, Marcus quickly gathered his things together and headed out of the restroom, making sure to take a short stop by the water fountain to fill the water bags Dresden had given him, before rushing back to the Rig.

At the Rig, Marcus found Orlović had already returned with a cart full of ammo cans, of which he and Dresden were in the process of stashing into the cab.

"Oh great, you got the water!" Dresden exclaimed as soon as he saw Marcus approaching them. "I'll deal with those, go help Orlović with the ammo."

Marcus nodded and walked over to Orlović, who barely acknowledged him and instead, gestured for Marcus to continue handing him the ammo cans.

"Twenty-one, twenty-two," Orlović counted as he shoved the cans inside the cab behind the seats. "Twenty-three, twenty-four, and twenty-five! I got twenty-five ammo cans Sarge! That's five thousand rounds, plus the ones we had already had... that should be enough ammo, you think?"

"One can only hope," Dresden replied with a shrug. "I suppose there's only one way to find out. Hey Billy! Go check the straps holding down the cargo in the back, will you? I don't trust some of those quartermasters to do their job properly."

"On it."

"Private Olsen, with me in the cab, I want to make sure you know how to properly drive this thing when it's this overloaded."

Marcus nodded. Stashing his rifle in its spot in the door, he hauled himself into the driver's seat.

"You should know all the basics, right?" Dresden said as soon as he climbed into the cab. "Air brakes, what gear you should be and all that other good stuff?"

"Yes sir," Marcus replied as he tested the pedals and the steering wheel. "They covered all that in training sir."

Dresden nodded. "I figured as much." He glanced around before leaning in close. "Marcus, are you good?"

Marcus took a moment to consider the question. He knew what Dresden was asking, but honestly, he wasn't sure what his answer should be.

"I think I'm okay for now Sergeant," Marcus finally said.

"But I'd feel a lot better if the Covenant weren't here," he added.

Dresden snorted. "You and me both kid, you and me both."

 _"6-1, this is 6-5, we're moving out."_

Dresden grabbed the radio. "Copy that 6-5. Alright guys, MOUNT UP! We're Oscar Mike!"

Marcus hurriedly strapped himself in Orlović climbed into the cab and took up position behind his turret. All three of them waited as the quartermasters rolled open the door to the warehouse, causing the familiar feeling of freezing cold air to fill the room.

"Head's on a swivel from this point out guys," Dresden commanded. "Olsen, move us out."

Marcus shifted into gear and jammed down on the accelerator, and the HEMTT lurched out of the warehouse.

Outside, the area was as cold and hostile as before, though it appeared all Covenant fighters had vacated the area for the moment. That's not to say the fighting had stopped though, as explosions could still be heard ringing out in the distance to the north. The area surrounding the camp was mostly empty, with all military units having already been deployed and aside from all few diehard holdouts, all civilians had been evacuated.

"Head for the highway."

Marcus nodded and turned the wheel so they were heading in the direction of where most of the sound of the fighting was coming from.

Between the evacuation order, the Covenant airstrikes, and the length of time that had already passed, Marcus wasn't expecting to see much, if any, other vehicles on the road. However, it turned out his expectations had been wrong: there were still all sorts of activity, almost all of which were military. Military vehicles of all types were parked in haphazard formations, tents had been erected, communication lines and antennas had been set up, and all sorts of artillery had been deployed. Soldiers were running around setting up fortifications or moving weapons around, or doing who knows what else. It all looked rather complex.

As Marcus started to pull towards the on ramp to the highway though, he was startled to see an entire convoy of military vehicles just sitting there. Consisting of twenty-five, open topped Warthog vehicles of various types, they were filled to the brim with soldiers who were all seemingly waiting for Marcus and platoon because upon seeing them, they all came to life.

"WHO THE HELL ARE THESE GUYS!?" Orlović yelled out, and Marcus could hear him turning his machine gun in their direction.

"They're probably the MPs that are supposed to go reinforce that tank unit!" Dresden yelled back. "So don't shoot them!"

As if on cue, the radio suddenly came to life.

 _"Actium Army logistics unit headed down the on ramp to highway 495, this is Knollwood-02, identify yourselves, over."_

Dresden grabbed the radio. "Knollwood? This is Voodoo 6-1. Are you the guys heading north to location 'Zippo,' over?"

 _"Copy that Voodoo. Our orders are to escort you guys up, and then separate."_

"Copy that. Knollwood, go ahead and put three Warthogs in the front of the convoy, and then two in between every other HEMTT."

 _"Wilco. Knollwood, out."_

"Marcus, slow down and let these guys put some of their Warthogs up front," Dresden ordered.

"Yes sir," Marcus mumbled. Tapping the breaks, he watched as the Warthog moved to take their place in convoy.

As he did, Marcus couldn't help but notice how very little firepower the MPs were actually sporting: only about half the Warthogs actually had mounted heavy weapons. The rest were simple troop transports. In comparison to the tanks Marcus had seen earlier today, he wasn't exactly sure what good they would do, but all Marcus could do was shake his head. Better them than him, he supposed.

They headed down onto the highway where, aside from the hulls of a few burnt out wrecks, there was nothing moving besides them.

"HEY, DID THEY FINISH THE EVACUATION?" Orlović suddenly called out.

"As much as they could," Dresden replied. "Anyone north of this point, if they haven't already evacuated, then they're not leaving this planet under their own power."

Marcus shivered at that grim pronouncement.

Dresden abruptly brought his hand up to the side of his head, and it took Marcus far long than he would have like to admit to realize Dresden was receiving a message over his headset.

"Head's up guys!" Dresden called out. "We're getting reports that the Covenant are sending armed reconnaissance patrols through our defensive lines. Command doesn't think they've gotten this far south yet, but the further we go, the higher the chance is we'll run into one. Keep your eyes up and your ears open. Orlović, cover the left side back, I'll cover the right side, and Marcus, you cover the left side front."

"Roger that Sarge," Marcus replied, reaching for his rifle to reassure himself that it was still there. He wasn't going to screw this up this time.

As he drove though, a thought suddenly occurred to him. Due to the heavy recoil, Marcus needed to keep both hands on his rifle. But if he was driving...

"Hey Sarge?" he called out.

"What is it Private?" Dresden replied, sounding a bit distracted.

"If we get attacked, what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to fight back?"

"You don't," Dresden tersely said. "If we get jumped, your priority is to keep us moving. Worst thing to do in an ambush situation is to get stuck in the kill zone. Keep moving, and we'll worry about fighting back later."

"Roger that."

"With that being said," Dresden added, "do make sure to keep your eyes peel. Me and Orlović will do the best we can, but there's only two of us. You might be able to spot and ambush before we can."

Marcus nodded.

They continued down the highway, and the sound of artillery firing started fading away behind them, only to be immediately replaced by the rumble of explosions from in front of them. Furthermore, Marcus was beginning to pick up the faint sound of gunfire in the distance. He couldn't help but notice that at some point, herd of military vehicles had disappeared at some point, leaving behind nothing but the burnt out wrecks of gun emplacements, destroyed Covenant fighters, blast craters, and a whole ton of brass casing. Marcus could only hope those vehicles were destroyed by air attacks as opposed to ground fire.

"Okay guys, stay alert. At this point, there's nothing between us and the frontlines," Dresden urged.

"YOU'D THINK THERE WOULD BE LIKE A SECONDARY LINE OF DEFENSE OR SOMETHING," Orlović yelled back.

"Not enough men," Dresden tersely replied. "Stay alert!"

Marcus did his best to keep watch of his sector, while at the same time, keep watch of the road in front of him to make sure he didn't accidentally run into the Warthog ahead of them, but it wasn't easy. At the moment, there were just too many places an ambush could be sprung from, too many -

Marcus abruptly froze and automatically began to apply the brakes.

"Marcus, we're slowing down, why, what's going on?" Dresden called out in alarm from behind his rifle.

"Sarge," Marcus slowly began. "I think I see movement."

"What? Where?"

Behind him, Marcus could hear Dresden shifting around for a better look. Marcus lifted his hand to point.

"Over - "

 _KABOOM!_

Marcus jerked in surprise as the Warthog at the front of the convoy unexpectedly burst into flames as something exploded underneath it! At the same time, all hell broke loose as plasma bolts began raining down on the convoy.

"Contact, CONTACT!" Dresden bellow.

"ENEMY CONTACT, LEFT FLANK!" Orlović screamed. "I'M ENGAGING!"

"6-5, this is 6-1, we have been engaged!" Dresden yelled as Orlović's turret started ringing with gunfire. "Point vehicle is toast: mine strike! Enemy contact, left flank! Break! Marcus, get us out of the kill zone!"

In response, Marcus jammed down on the accelerator and watched as the numbers on the speedometer steadily start to climb upwards. All sorts of Covenant projectiles were flying in, smashing against the cab of the HEMTT. Stuck behind the wheel though, all Marcus could do was hunch over and keep his eyes on the road. Fortunately for him, the HEMTT had enough armor to withstand most of the Covenant small arms fire, but the same couldn't be said about the Warthogs accompanying them. Because of their open topped designs, Marcus was able to watch as the driver of Warthog in front of them take a direct hit to the side of the head.

"Oh shit!" Marcus screamed as the Warthog began to spin out of control.

The front passenger immediately abandoned his rifle and leapt for the steering wheel, but before he could grab it, the Warthog jerked to the left and drove straight into the barrier wall. At the speeds they had been traveling, the Warthog hit the wall with enough force to actually cause the wall to burst, throwing chunks of concrete in all directions.

"Son of a bitch!" Marcus yelled as they sped past and without thinking, he craned his neck to see if anyone of the Warthog's passengers had made it. By reflex, he also started turning the HEMTT in that direction, but Dresden quickly grabbed the wheel.

"Hey! Keep your eyes on the damn road!" Dresden snapped.

"Sorry sir!" Marcus reflexively replied but Dresden was no longer listening.

"6-5, this is 6-1!" he was saying. "Be advised, both lead vehicles have been scrapped, 6-1 is now on point, I say again, Voodoo 6-1 is now on point!"

 _"Roger that! Keep pushing, keep pushing!"_

Scott started to say something else, but Marcus was no longer paying attention. He stared. Up ahead, maybe a hundred meters down the road, the highway abruptly narrowed down to two lanes because of a couple abandoned cars sitting on either side of the road. Emerging from behind one of those cars, Marcus spotted a Covenant Skirmisher running to the center of the road carrying what looked like a giant dinner plate, of which he tossed to the ground before sprinting away as fast as possible.

"Hey!" Marcus called out. "Sergeant! We got a bad guy in front of us!"

"What?" Dresden distractedly yelled back.

"Covenant in front of us! Um... CONTACT FRONT!"

"Wha - oh shit! Landmine, landmine! Stop the vehicle, STOP THE VEHICLE!"

Marcus immediately slammed on the brakes but for reason, maybe it was because of the speed they were traveling at coupled with all the extra weight they were carrying, the brakes immediately locked up and to Marcus' horror, the HEMTT continued to barrel straight ahead towards the mine.

"Oh shit, oh shit! WATCH OUT!"

The next thing Marcus knew, he was picking his head off his steering wheel, with a cloud of dust floating through the air inside the cab, and a slight ringing in his ears. He felt something touch him, and he reflexively flinched, but it was only Dresden.

"You alright?" he heard Dresden ask as his hearing slowly returned to him. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Marcus managed to groan out. He tasted blood, but he couldn't figure out the source.

"Come on! We got to get out of here!"

Marcus nodded, even though it hurt his head to do so, and started to open his door when -

 _FWOOZ FWOOZ BANG!_

A couple of plasma bolts splattered against his window and Marcus immediately slammed the door shut.

"Contact is on the left side Marcus," Dresden called out, somehow managing to sound sarcastic despite the circumstances. "Might not want to go out that way."

Marcus was too shaken to protest.

Grabbing his rifle, he climbed through the cab and stumbled out of Dresden's door and onto the ground. Immediately he was assaulted by the sound of the firefight that was raging all around him. He looked around.

The HEMTT had struck the mine with its front right tire, shredding it and leaving a sizable crater in the road of which the HEMTT was currently sitting in. Because of the way it was positioned, it was currently blocking the entire road, preventing the rest of the convoy from advancing, a fact the Covenant were evidently taking full advantage of by launching a full scale attack on the highway. Plasma showered ever vehicle on the road while the human forces fired back with everything they had.

"Orlović, you good?" Dresden yelled as Marcus climbed to his feet.

"What the fuck was that?" Orlović yelled back from the top of his turret.

"Tripmine!"

"Shit!"

 _"6-1, this is 6-5, come in!"_

Dresden grabbed his mic. "This is 6-1, go ahead!"

 _"6-1, we're taking effect fire across the entire convoy! At the moment, your Rig is blocking the way! Is it at all possible for you to get out of the way, over?"_

Marcus automatically started to climb back into the cab to check, but Dresden quickly grabbed him and yanked him down as a plasma bolt splattered against the door frame.

"Negative," Dresden replied over the radio. "We're stuck in a crater. We need someone to pull us out!"

Marcus glanced down and realized it was true. With the way the HEMTT had landed in the crater, the front of the cab was pressed against the far wall of the crater, meaning backing up was the only option. But with all the trailers they had been towing, backing up under their own power wasn't going to be possible.

Over the radio, Marcus could hear Scott sighing.

 _"Alright, let me see if I can't get a wrecker unit up front. In the meantime, is there a way we can get around you, over?"_

"Not unless you've got an engineering unit that can sweep this area for more mines!"

 _"Fuck. Okay, 6-5 to all victors, hold your position!"_

The line went dead and Dresden glanced over at Marcus. "Come on Private, we got to get in this fight! Weapon up!"

Marcus started, and then hastily brought his rifle up to his shoulder. Adopting a similar firing stance to Dresden, Marcus carefully poked his body around the HEMTT.

"Target! Covenant Skirmisher in the open!" Dresden bellowed. "Five three meters on the left!"

Taking a deep breath, Marcus pulled the trigger.

 _BANGBANGBANG!_

Bullets spat out from the muzzle of his rifle and brass casings littered the ground as Marcus quickly emptied his magazine. Given the chaos, Marcus wasn't sure if he actually hit anything, nor did the incoming fire slacken in the least bit, but the mere fact Marcus was finally fighting back actually made him feel so much better.

"Just like that Marcus, keep at it, keep at it!" he heard Dresden yell and feeling emboldened, Marcus quickly ripped out his empty magazine and reloaded. Poking his head around the corner once more, Marcus fired again.

 _BANGBANGBANG!_

The acrid smell of gunpowder began filling his nostrils and his hands started to get toasty as the hand guard to his rifle quickly heated up, but Marcus ignored his discomfort as he continued to pull the trigger. He was finding that there was something so exhilarating, so exciting, in being able to fight back in a firefight, as opposed to simply being just another useless target, and he wondered why he hadn't tried doing this hours ago.

"Maintain suppressing fire!" he heard Dresden yelling in the background. "I want fire superiority! Keep up the fire!"

"LOADING!" Orlović suddenly called out and Marcus looked up to see Orlović hastily shoving a new belt into his machine gun.

"Marcus, cover! Pick up your rate of fire!"

Gritting his teeth, Marcus made the decision to switch his rifle to full auto and pull the trigger, dumping his entire magazine downrange in less than a second. Ripping out the empty and tossing it to the ground, he frantically pulled a fresh one from his belt and slammed it home.

"BACK UP!" Marcus heard Orlović cry, before someone landed on the ground next to him, causing him to jump, but it was only Dresden.

"Come on Olsen! Show me what you got!" he urged and Marcus nodded.

Yanking back on the charging handle, he leveled his rifle and started shooting.

"You're shooting too low! Bring it up a notch!" Dresden yelled into his ear and Marcus moved to adjust. "Right there! Keep it right there! That's it Private! Keep pouring it on them!"

Adrenaline surging through his veins, Marcus did just that, maintaining his fire. All around him, explosions were going off, plasma and tracers were flying all over the place, it was crazy! There was so much going on, it was almost overwhelming. Marcus felt like he was on the wildest roller coaster ride he'd ever been on, only multiplied by a ten! He found that all he focus on was pulling that trigger.

His rifle suddenly let out a mute _click_ , and he reflexively yanked back on the charging handle and pull the trigger, but again nothing happened.

"You're out of ammo!" Dresden call. "Reload! Here, take this!"

Marcus looked up in time to catch the magazine Dresden tossed his way. Ejecting the empty one from his rifle, Marcus stuffed the fresh one in, almost putting it in backwards but catching himself at the last second, and drove the bolt home.

"You're doing great Private! Keep it up! Keep pouring it on them! Make those fuckers regret ever coming to this planet! Come on!"

Marcus suddenly found himself laughing, and he wondered when he even began, but he quickly shoved that question out of his mind as he poked his head around the corner once more. He reflexively ducked back as a plasma bolt splattered against the frame of the HEMTT right above his head, showering him with sparks, and he quickly pivoted and fired in the direction the bolt had come from. Then, over the roar of gunfire, he heard Orlović suddenly scream out, "SERGEANT! SKIRMISHER WITH A HEAVY WEAPON! LEFT FLANK, SEVENTY METERS!"

"Take him out! Marcus, focus fire!"

Marcus immediately turned in the direction Dresden and Orlović were shooting at, but because of all the dust and the haze, at first he didn't see the target. But then a Covenant Skirmisher clearly stood up from a snowy hole in the ground with a fuel rod cannon sitting on his shoulder pointed straight at the convoy.

"TAKE HIM OUT!"

Marcus leveled his rifle and started shooting. He could see bullets impacting the area all around the Skirmisher, and Marcus couldn't tell if he was hitting the creature or not, but he could clearly see when a long line of tracer rounds fired by Orlović's machine gun cut the alien vertically in half, from waist to stern -

\- but not before the alien was able to fire a shot off.

"INCOMING!"

It was like a giant hand just picked him and drove him into the ground. Marcus was completely blown off his feet as a literal wall of compressed air slammed into him, forcing the very air out of his lungs. All sounds instantly disappeared as his hearing protection sealed itself, adding a sort of surreal feeling to the entire situation. A cloud of dust, chunks of flaming metal, and an odd assortment of debris started raining down on him and although he couldn't hear them hitting, Marcus could feel it as they pelted his body, but he found he couldn't do anything but lay there and take it. He tried to cough, or at least, he thought he did, only to find his lungs were completely covered in dust, making it next to impossible for him to catch his breath. He reached up to touch his face, only to find blood pouring out from his nostrils. He looked up to see a large black plume of smoke rising up from somewhere near the rear of the convoy.

His hearing slowly began to return to him, and as it did, Marcus' ears were suddenly flooded with all sorts of frantic calls over the radio.

 _"...down! 6-6 is down!"_

 _"Medic! I need a medic over here at - "_

 _" - firing, keep firing!"_

A shadow loomed over Marcus and it took him a moment to realize it was Dresden. Dresden extended an arm towards him and Marcus quickly grabbed it, and allowed Dresden to help haul him to his feet.

"Marcus, you good?" he heard Dresden scream, even though his words were still a bit muffled.

"I think," Marcus tried to reply, but he wasn't sure if Dresden heard him.

"What the fuck was that!?" someone else yelled and Marcus glanced over his shoulder to see Orlović, who at some point had climbed out from his turret and tossed himself to the ground.

"One of the HEMTTs got hit!" Dresden yelled back. "Set off all the shells he was carrying! Thank god he was in the middle of reversing away from the convoy, otherwise we'd all be nothing more than blood splatters on the ground right now, but fuck! THAT HURT!"

Marcus bobbed his head in agreement.

 _CRACK!_

A purple needle shattered against the pavement nearby. Dresden and Orlović immediately whipped out their weapons, a rifle and a pistol, respectively, and started shooting back in the direction the needle had come from.

"Come on! We're not out of the woods just yet! Get your heads back in the game!" Dresden urged as he dove for cover.

Marcus casted around for his rifle, finding it on the ground a few meters away, grabbed it and shook off the dust. He was just about to start shooting, when another call came over the radio.

 _"6-1, this is 6-5!"_

Dresden grabbed his radio, but upon finding it destroyed, grabbed the one off Marcus' back.

"This is 6-1, go ahead!"

 _"6-1, that explosion has left unexploded ordnance all over the fucking highway! Wreckers and sappers can't make it up the road until they clear that shit! But we are getting slaughtered out here! Find me a way to get this convoy moving again! Break! Cataphract, this is Voodoo, come in! Be advised, we are cut off and pinned down by enemy contacts two klicks south of your pos! Currently enemy strength unknown, but we are taking heavy casualties! Requesting immediate reinforcements, over!"_

"Orlović, Marcus, on me! We got to move these fucking cars out of the way!" Dresden barked, pointing at the cars lining the highway and blocking the way.

"I thought we were concerned about more mines?" Marcus protested.

"No time! We're just going to have to risk it!"

Marcus nodded, then slung his rifle onto his back and followed Dresden as he led them to the nearest car. He watched as Dresden smash the window open with the butt of his rifle and shift the car into neutral.

"Come on lads! Put your backs into it! Push!" Dresden bellowed, and Marcus began shoving the car frame with all his might.

At first, he had a hard time find his footing on the snow covered road, but once he dug his foot in, he found the car was slowly beginning to inch forward. Unfortunately, such a move immediately attracted the Covenant's attention.

 _FWOOZFWOOZ CRASH!_

Marcus flinched as a plasma bolt smashed into the rear window, causing it to explode from the sheer heat.

"Shit, GET DOWN!"

Dresden grabbed him and shoved him down before firing his rifle on full auto right over Marcus' head, causing him to slap his hands over his ears at the loud noise.

Dresden abruptly stopped to reload and Marcus glanced around to see the body of a Covenant Skirmisher laying on the ground on the other side of the highway with multiple fresh holes in his chest. But unfortunately, he wasn't alone. With a loud, inhuman shriek, two more Skirmishers appeared, leaping over the barrier wall that separated the southbound lanes from the northbound lanes. Armed with a small assortment of melee weapons, they began charging straight at Marcus.

"Marcus, look out!" Orlović cried as Marcus struggled to pull out his rifle. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Orlović's pistol appear in his hand, but then he let out a loud grunt of pain, and Marcus turned around only to see a THIRD Skirmisher had appeared from around the car.

The new Skirmisher immediately started attacking Orlović, grabbing a hold of his pistol and shoving it aside before Orlović could bring it to bear. The move caused Orlović to accidentally fire the gun, almost hitting Marcus in the foot with the stray round, before the Skirmisher knocked the pistol right out from his hands. Then both fighters were on the ground, battling it out.

Marcus grabbed his rifle and tried to find a way to help out, but both combatants were too close together and there was no way for Marcus to shoot the Skirmisher without somehow hitting Orlović. Before he could figure it out, the two original Skirmishers were all over him.

A fist abruptly smashed into Marcus' face, knocking him to the ground. Hitting the ground, Marcus felt his rifle getting kicked from his hands before he was rolled over onto his back. As he laid there, one of the Skirmishers appeared over him. A sort of sneer passed over the creature's ugly face as he pulled out a plasma pistol and pointed it straight at Marcus' face and stunned, all Marcus could do was weakly raise his hand and wait for death.

 _BANG BANG!_

Two holes suddenly appeared in the Skirmisher's chest and as the alien glanced down to dumbly stare at his wounds in shock, Dresden appeared out of nowhere. Driving his shoulder into the Skirmisher and bowling his over, Dresden slid Marcus' rifle across the ground and towards him.

"Get up Private!" he bellowed but before Marcus could stagger upright, the second Skirmisher grabbed a hold of Dresden from behind and dragged him out of Marcus' line of sight.

Alarmed, Marcus forced himself to his feet and look around to see if he could help, only to stop and stare in surprise. Dresden and the Skirmisher were in the middle of fighting hand to hand, but it was clear, even to Marcus, Dresden had some training as, not only was he holding his own, but he looked like he was actually winning.

The Skirmisher swung his right arm in a wide roundhouse punch, but Dresden calmly blocked it with his arm before delivering a vicious head-butt to the aliens face and sending him staggering. But as the Skirmisher stumbled backwards, he abruptly lashed out with his leg, kicking Dresden in the shin. While Dresden _was_ wearing shin pads, the blow did cause him to stumble forward and into the Skirmisher.

Through his arms out, Dresden managed to reach and grab a hold of the Skirmisher for balance. The Skirmisher tried to shove him off, but Dresden held on tight and instead, managed to shift his weight around enough to throw the Skirmisher off balance to the point he was able to throw the creature into a nearby car. The Skirmisher hit the side of the door, smashing the window in with his elbow by accident as he hit. Dresden immediately charged him, driving his right fist into the Skirmisher's stomach and then slugging him across the face with his right.

With the Skirmisher winded and stunned, Dresden took a step back and pulled out a handgun to shoot him, but then the Skirmisher grabbed a handful of glass and threw it at Dresden's face. It was all tempered glass, so it failed to do any serious damage, but it did distract Dresden long enough for the Skirmisher to recover his breath and charge at him.

Dresden let out a grunt of pain as the Skirmisher drove his shoulder into his stomach, wrapping his arms around Dresden's waist as he did. The Skirmisher made a motion to the right, as if he was trying to throw Dresden, but Dresden was clearly heavier than the Skirmisher thought because aside from stumbling a bit, Dresden failed to be moved. In fact, all this maneuver did was leave the Skirmisher open to attack, which Dresden proceeded to by driving his elbows down into the back of the Skirmisher's head.

Seeing all this go down, Marcus decided now was a good time to intervene. He hefted his rifle and took one step forward, but before he could take a second, something grabbed his ankle, causing him to trip. His rifle flying out of his hands as he fell, Marcus found himself lying on the ground without his rifle once more. He looked back to see what had tripped him, only to see the Skirmisher Dresden had shot holding onto his leg with a crazed look on his face. Marcus immediately scrambled for his rifle, but with a strength unbefitting of his small size, the Skirmisher dragged Marcus back in his direction.

Turning around, Marcus tried to kick at the Skirmisher's face, but the creature deftly blocked the blow, and then soaked Marcus in the face with enough force, Marcus' head snapped back and banged hard against the pavement, stunning him despite his helmet. Unable to resist, the Skirmisher mounted Marcus' and pulled out a wicked looking dagger. Lifting it over his head, the Skirmisher was about to stab the dagger down into Marcus' neck when -

 _THWOCK!_

"Ahhh!" Marcus screamed as the Skirmisher, suddenly missing his upper body, toppled over and landed right on top of him, covering him in blood. "Get it off!"

A pair of rough hands abruptly shoved the corpse off him and helped him to his feet. Marcus looked up, expecting to see Dresden, but it turned out to be Orlović, sporting a black eye and a bloodied lip, but alive and well.

"Jesus Christ, what the hell was that!?" Marcus exclaimed, eyeing the half corpse with a bit of disgust.

In response, Orlović pointed down the highway and Marcus looked up to see three Grizzly tanks and some sort of heavily armored personnel carrier firing their machine guns and making their way down the road towards them. As he watched, one of the tanks fired its main gun, and Marcus heard the loud shriek as the shell passed through the air before exploding in the field the convoy had been taking most of the Covenant fire from.

"Why hello 53rd Armored," Dresden declared as he walked up.

"About damn time," Orlović could be heard muttering.

The vehicles began spreading out. Three of the tanks and the APC continued to advance on the Covenant's position, firing their weapons and driving them off. The last tank, however, continued down the road towards Marcus and the others. As it approached, Marcus could see a hatch opening on top and a woman climbed out and started to run towards them.

"First Sergeant Noble of the 53rd Armored," the lady yelled as she reached them. "You Voodoo?"

"Yes First Sergeant!" Dresden yelled back.

Noble waved at them. "Then let's go!

Dresden shook his head. "Our rig is struck!"

"What?"

"Our HEMTT! Is. Stuck!" he yelled, pointing at the truck. "We need a tow!"

Marcus could see Noble mounting a string of curse words before she grabbed her radio. She was now close enough Marcus could hearing her saying, "Sergeant Helmand! They say their truck is stuck! We need the tow bars, get out here!"

The hatch to the tank opened up once more, and an Indian-looking man poked his head out. Even from this distance, Marcus could make out the name "Tariq" stenciled in big bold letters on the front of his helmet.

Tariq took one look at Marcus and the others, and Marcus could clearly see him saying, "How the hell did you idiots do that?" but he nevertheless climbed out of the tank and jumped to the ground.

Before Marcus could see what the man was planning on doing to get their HEMTT unstuck, Dresden roughly grabbed him and shoved him in the direction of the Rig.

"Get in the cab and get ready to reverse," he ordered, shoving Marcus' rifle back in his hands at the same time, before running off to go help Tariq.

Marcus immediately ran into the Rig, stowing his rifle away in its normal spot, and hit the ignition, praying that the mine hadn't destroyed their engine. To his surprise, the engine activated without a hitch, and Marcus strapped himself in. He sat there and watched as Dresden and Helmand run to the front of the tank where a couple of thick looking bars were located, and extend them so they looked like the forks on a forklift. The tank moved forward until the bars were just about touching the rig. While Dresden and Orlović set about attaching them to the HEMTT, Tariq came running up to Marcus' window.

"Listen up the Private!" he bellowed. "We're going to need to push you back out of the crater. That means, as soon as you feel Lillian pushing against your truck, you hit the accelerator. Got it?"

"Got it sir!" Marcus smartly replied.

"I'm not a fucking 'sir,'" Tariq snapped. "I'm a Sergeant in the UNSC Army. Means I fucking work for a living. Call me sir again, I'll rip your damn head off and shit down your throat. Got it PRIVATE!?"

Startled by the hostility, all Marcus could do was nod his head but by that point, Tariq was no longer paying attention.

"Sergeant! You guys set?"

Dresden gave him a thumbs up as he and Orlović quickly scurried out of the way.

"Alright, Corona?" Marcus heard Tariq say into his radio as he hopped off the cab steps. "Move it forward. Slowly though!"

The tank gunned its engine and began to slowly move forward and push the bars against the HEMTT. As soon as Marcus felt the HEMTT begin to move, he jammed down on the accelerator. A loud screeching noise filled the air as his tires skidded against the ground before they abruptly found traction, and the HEMTT slowly began to back out of the crater.

"Alright, that's good! Driver, halt!" Tariq yelled as soon as Marcus was back on solid ground. "Sergeant! Unhook my tank! Corona, as soon as you're free, see if you can't knock some of these fucking cars into that hole. Try and fill it up."

Tariq headed back to his tank. In the meantime, Marcus waited somewhat impatiently for Dresden and Orlović to finish unhooking the tow bars from the HEMTT.

"Okay, we're clear!" Dresden finally announced. First Sergeant Noble immediately took charge once more.

"All crews, mount up!" she roared over the sound of her tank spinning around so that it was facing the right way. "Voodoo, this is Cataphract. Your truck is free; we'll escort you to the mission area, break. 07 to 3-1 and Dragoon 2-2, mount up! We're moving out!"

Marcus glanced over as Dresden and Orlović climbed into the cab.

"Billy, get back on your gun," Dresden ordered. "6-5, this is 6-1, be advised, our rig is free and we are Oscar Mike, over."

 _"Roger that!"_

"Let's go Marcus! Drive!"

Throwing the truck into gear, Marcus followed the tanks as they headed down the highway. Behind him, he could hear gunfire coming from the vehicles closer to the rear, but they were quickly dying down, which led Marcus to believe the Covenant weren't interested in pursuing them.

"Everyone alright? You guys okay? Not too serious injured?" Dresden asked as the gunfire finally ceased. "Billy?"

"I'm okay!"

"Marcus?"

"I'm good."

Dresden nodded. "Good. Hey, good shooting back there by the way Marcus. Keep up the good work."

"Thanks Sarge," Marcus wearily said, doing his best to keep the HEMTT straight.

"Hey, how's the handling on the Rig," Dresden asked upon noticing Marcus struggle.

"She wants to drift to the right, for obvious reasons. But I can handle it," Marcus added.

Dresden nodded. "Yeah. Well, our run-flat tires will get us to the mission objective, but we should swap them out as soon as possible. But let me know if it becomes problem."

Marcus grunted in acknowledgement. A thought suddenly occurred to him and he could help but wonder out loud, "Hey Sarge? How come that mine didn't do more damage to the vehicle? I mean, not that I wanted it to, but I thought for sure we'd be dead."

Marcus could see Dresden giving him an amused look. "You do realize the UNSC had been fighting an insurgency for near a century before the Covenant arrived, right? Every vehicle in the UNSC is designed to be pretty resistant to mines or IEDs, if nothing else."

"Ah," was all Marcus could say.

"Yeah... Anyways, keep your eyes peeled guys, we're not completely out of the woods just yet."

"Roger that Sarge."

They wearily traveled down the road as the sound of fighting in the distance continued to echo all around them.


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter 22**

 **Heliopolis Station, High Orbit, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
1245**

 **Spaatz**

" _You should have consulted me first."_

Instead of replying straight away, Spaatz took a moment to take a large swig out of the steaming cup of coffee he had in his hand, both as a stall tactic in order to allow himself to gather his thoughts, and also because he _really_ need that caffeine boost.

With both his attempts at disabling or destroying the Covenant capital ships having ended in failure, a sort of stalemate had emerged in space: while he _had_ managed to force those cruisers out of position and away from the planet while simultaneously inflicting an untold amount of damage to the invading fleet, doing so had cost him quite a bit of casualties among his own forces. As both fleets withdrew to lick their wounds, the focus of the invasion had shifted to the surface of Actium, where Spaatz's ground forces were doing their best to contain the Covenant attack. Because of that, and the need to better coordinate with the various surface commands, Spaatz had finally decided to transfer himself back to his headquarters aboard the orbital defense platform _Heliopolis Station._

Of course, as a naval man, Spaatz would be the first to admit that in a ground war slugfest, the likes of which was currently unfolding nearly thirty thousand klicks on the surface below him, he would be completely out of his depth. Which is why he was here, in a holoconference call, with the supreme commander of all military forces on Actium, a certain four star general by the name of Jason Langley.

General Langley was an Army general who had loyally served with the UNSC armed forces for nearly half a century. Unlike most general officers in his position, Langley had begun his career as an enlisted artilleryman, who had been able to work his way up the ranks with his sharp wit and sheer tenacity. A combat veteran who had been baptized by fire in the opening days of the Insurrection, Langley had ended up making the switch to logistics when he had been commissioned as an officer, however he still processed a keen tactical mind. In comparison to some of his other staff officers, Spaatz found he rather enjoyed working with Langley, even if Langley was somewhat humorless at times, especially during crises such as this one.

Realizing Langley was still waiting for a response, Spaatz lowered his cup and sighed.

"General," he began, "you'll have to excuse me as it's been a rather long day so far, so I apologize if what I'm about to say next comes across as rather…" he paused to think of an appropriate word, "…terse, but I'm not quite comprehending your dilemma here. Correct me if I'm wrong but, you _are_ the supreme commander of all military forces here on Actium, are you not?"

" _All_ _ **UNSC**_ _forces,"_ Langley corrected, a grim look on his face. _"But yes Admiral, I am."_

"And at the moment, the Covenant are on Actium… are they not?"

" _That they are."_

"Okay. Then, as the supreme commander of all UNSC forces on Actium, you should be able to engage the Covenant now as they are… on Actium."

Spaatz's eyes flicked up to Langley's face, hoping to see a reaction, but his hologram must have froze as his face didn't so much as twitch. Biting back a sigh, Spaatz continued.

"Perhaps, General, this is the result of my naval background, but this seems pretty straight forward to me. So, allow me to be blunt: what exactly is your problem here?"

Langley pinched the bridge of his nose, allowing Spaatz to see just how frustrated he actually was, and Spaatz began to regret his choice of words. _"My problem, sir, as you so succinctly put it, is the fact that apparently, the only reason why the Covenant are on the surface of Actium at moment is because_ you let them get there _. And the fact that you didn't so much as grant me the curtesy of a warning_ **before** _you did!"_

Spaatz couldn't help but sigh at that. Somehow he knew that was going to bite him in the ass, but it seemed like the proper thing to do that the time. "You are absolutely correct General, and I apologize for the disrespect I have shown you. However, you need to understand that time was of the essence when the decision was made, and as _you_ were unavailable for consultation at the time…" Mindful of the cup of coffee in his hands, Spaatz did his best to avoid throwing his hands up in the air in frustration.

"At any case General," Spaatz continued, "it wasn't a decision made lightly. I had the full support of Colonel Harper – "

" _Lieutenant Colonel Harper may be very good at gathering intelligence sir, but his biggest problem is that he see people as nothing more than pieces on a chessboard to be moved around by the player, of which, the majority of the time he considers to be himself,"_ Langley interrupted. _"In his position, that's excusable as he mostly deals with cold hard facts, but for a field grade officer, he has an alarmingly lack of knowledge when it comes to logistics and strategy."_

Spaatz paused, but found he couldn't really refute anything Langley had just said. For the most part, that had been the impression he himself had gotten from Harper, though as someone who had to work alongside the likes of ONI, it was probably an essential skillset.

"Okay General, I will concede that Colonel Harper was perhaps not the best person to consult on matters such as these," Spaatz allowed, "but as you yourself point out, Colonel Harper deals in facts. And the fact is, you _vastly_ outnumber anything the Covenant were capable of fielding in the short time their cruisers were on station over the city. So, again I ask: what is the predicament here…"

Spaatz trailed off as Langley quickly raised his index finger.

" _On paper, Admiral,_ " he insisted. _"On paper, my forces outnumber the Covenant something like fifty to one. Maybe even a hundred to one. Hell, according to these documents, I have enough combat and logistical units to field, I don't know, something like eight or nine army groups, depending on how I allocate them."_

"Okay…" Spaatz slowly began. "So that's what the documents say. But, given your reaction, I'm going to assume reality is a little bit different?"

" _In reality, only about a twentieth of those forces are actually present on this planet."_

Spaatz stared him. "Excuse me? How is that even possible?"

Langley grimaced. _"Admiral, have you ever heard of the UNSC Army system_ POMCUS(1)?"

"No, I have not."

 _"It is an acronym that stands for Prepositioning Of Material Configured in Unit Sets,"_ Langley explained. _"Essentially, because of the heavy nature of UNSC Army equipment, both in terms of weight and logistical consumption, it takes a lot of effort to move said equipment across systems, especially since most of the Army was stationed in the inner colonies, while most of the hot zones were occurring in the outer colonies. As humanity continued to expand across the galaxy, so too did the time it took for the Army to respond to incidents. In order to compensate, the Army took to designating a number of planets sitting on the border between the inner colonies and outer colonies as POMCUS sites: locations where they would preposition entire corps' worth of equipment_ _and vehicles. The idea being, the time it took to deploy to hot zones would be cut in half as a unit's equipment would be already halfway there."_

"And Actium is one of those sites, I presume?" Spaatz guessed.

 _"Yes. Which comes into the problem of my paper army: all this equipment still belongs to the unit in question, so each unit keeps a small detachment at each POMCUS location to maintain said equipment. Those detachments still show up as a part of their parent units, so while on paper it may appear entire armored corps are present here on Actium, in reality, all together they maybe consist of about a company's worth of soldiers."_

Spaatz sighed and took another sip from cup. "Okay. Talk to me then. What _**do**_ you have on the ground?"

Langley gestured, and a map of Byzas and the surrounding area appeared. _"Byzas falls within the AO of the XIV Armored Corps, but of its three assigned divisions, only one is physically present on the surface: the 53rd Armored. The situation on the ground is... chaotic, to say the least. The 53rd AD was in the middle of getting refitted after nearly being annihilated on Draco III and as a result, wasn't at full strength to begin with. Compounding the situation is the fact the Covenant landed right in the middle of the division, essentially cutting it in half."_

 _"As soon as the Covenant touched down, I gave orders for all forces to begin an immediate counterattack, which promptly failed due to a lack of troops. One unit was however able to capture their objective, the town of Newington just south of the city, creating a hole in the Covenant's defensive line. Despite repeated attempts by the Covenant to dislodge them, they've managed to hold out though they're going to need reinforcements, and fast."_

 _"To the north though, it's one giant mess. Soldiers weren't ready when the invasion began, units weren't in position, and most of my senior commanders are already dead or cut off. I ordered the 222nd Airborne Division in as soon as they arrived in system to try and take over the situation, but that didn't really work. The only reason why we haven't been overrun just yet is because a city the size of Byzas is not an easy place to take control of. But unless we act now, well, it's only a matter of time."_

Spaatz massaged his temples. "What do you need from me?"

 _"Troops. First, I need you to federalize all colonial and provincial militias so that they'll be under my command."_

"I thought Governor Sargsyan already did that?"

 _"No, all she did was declare martial law, which simply meant the Colonial Militia was taking control over the entire colony. But they're still under their own chain of command. I need you to federalize them so that they'll be under UNSC control."_

Spaatz nodded. "Done. What else?"

 _"Reinforcements. I understand elements of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Force(2) just arrived in system?"_

Spaatz subtlety gestured at the camera for Kanin, who appeared just off screen and nodded in confirmation. "Yes, they have."

 _"Good. Drop them into the city."_

"Byzas?"

 _"Yes."_

"Why there and not in the south?"

 _"I've got enough CM units in the south I can use to bolster my defenses until the XXX Infantry Corps arrives from the south to take over, but I don't have that in the north. Furthermore, according to the reports I'm getting, the Covenant have suddenly shifted the weight of their attack north."_

Spaatz looked at him, intrigued. "Really. Why?"

Langley shook his head. _"Not sure sir. Surveillance seems to suggest the Covenant have gone into a search pattern: they're looking for something, though what that something is, I not sure. Early intel seems to suggest they're looking for some sort of UNSC high value target that was lost about an hour ago, but I just checked with all my commands and no one has noticed anything. Not sure about FLEETCOM though..."_

Langley trailed off with an expectant look on his face, but Spaatz shook his head. He couldn't think -

He paused. ONI's spec ops team.

Ever since they had destroyed the Covenant's battlecruiser from the inside, they had gone completely dark. At first he'd been concerned they had been destroyed by their own nuke. After all, the bomb had gone off far earlier than he had anticipated.

But now, in light of the information he had just received, he was beginning to wonder if the lack of communication was for a far prettier reason: they had been avoiding him.

Spaatz resisted the urge to snort. That would be so typical of ONI to withhold critical information like that.

"General Langley, I'm afraid I'm going to have to end this call," Spaatz finally said. "You'll get your troops; I guarantee it. In the meantime though, I'm afraid I'm going to need to make a call to someone else."

Langley looked curious, but he evidently knew better than to ask. Bowing his head ever so slightly, his hologram disappeared, leaving Spaatz fumbling.

"Kanin," he said, and Kanin's anamorphic hare avatar abruptly appeared in front of him. "I'm guessing you were listening.

"Yes sir."

"Connect me to the _Sonata_."

Kanin disappeared. A few seconds later, his image was replaced by that of Major Volkov and Commander Luzader. As Spaatz expected it would.

"Gentlemen," he began, as he fought to keep a neutral tone to his voice. "I just received word that the Covenant have gone into a sort of search pattern directly over the city of Byzas, as if they were looking for something. Something big. Something absolutely crucial to the success of this war. Care to explain?"

 _"We lost our Spartan team,"_ Volkov immediately said, causing Spaatz to blink in surprise. He didn't think they were going to outright admit to it.

"Come again?" Spaatz inquired. "What do you mean, you 'lost your Spartan team?'"

 _"Infiltration of the target battlecruiser went off without a hitch however during extraction, our bomb prematurely detonated for reasons currently unknown. As a result, Spartan team Argon was unable to extract in time and were ejected from the ship and landed somewhere in the middle of Byzas. At this point sir, we don't know where the Spartans are, what their status is, or if they're even alive at this juncture,"_ Volkov quickly explained, and Spaatz could tell he was not happy about this turn of events. Of course, neither was Spaatz.

"Major," Spaatz began as he pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. "The Covenant cruiser was destroyed by your team nearly an hour ago. Why am I just hearing about this _now!?_ "

 _"We were attempt to gather intelligence so that we would be able to present to you a definitive solution to this situation,"_ Volkov began, sounding a bit defensive, but Spaatz quickly interrupted him.

"No gentlemen, this is unacceptable, _completely unacceptable_!" he snapped. "It's one thing not to inform me of your presence in the system; at least you can hide behind the classified nature of your unit. But it's a different matter entirely in a disaster such as this!"

Neither Volkov nor Luzader said anything and instead, shuffled around somewhat uncomfortably. Given the situation, Spaatz couldn't help but derive some satisfaction at that sight, however fleeting.

He sighed and took another sip from his cup.

"But that's neither here nor there," he announced. "What's done is done. Now we have to figure out some way to deal with it. Information and facts. I need both. What do we know?"

Volkov shook his head. _"Not much sir. At approximately eleven forty hours local time, an Army self-propelled surface-to-air missile battery picked up three rapidly moving objects entering the atmosphere at the estimated time and location of where Argon Team would have entered the atmosphere after being ejected from target 1-Delta. Unfortunately the SAM wasn't pointed in the right direction, so we weren't able to track them, but the predicted trajectory places them as having landed somewhere in downtown Byzas. Approximately one hundred and thirty three seconds later, we picked up Argon Team's transponder, unfortunately it lasted all of fourteen point seven six two seconds before terminating. Not long enough for us to obtain an exact lock."_

"So they made it to the surface intact," Spaatz noted.

 _"Not necessarily sir,"_ Luzader immediately interrupted, drawing Spaatz's attention. _"Pardon the interruption sir, but we don't actually know if the team is intact or not."_

Before Spaatz could ask for an elaboration, Volkov whirled around on Luzader.

 _"The very fact that we were able to pick up on their transponder would prove that they did Commander,"_ he said, sounding surprisingly heated.

 _"Again, Major, we don't know that for certain!"_ Luzader immediately retorted. _"Those transponders were hardly active for any significant amount of time. For all we know, that could have been an echo from something else or even a glitch in the system as it fell apart! You have to remember how far and fast they were falling when they hit the ground Major!"_

 _"That signal was uniquely program and coded for the Spartans. There is absolutely no way anyone else could have duplicated the signal; we would have known!"_ Volkov retorted. _"Furthermore, it's impossible for it to have been a glitch as those transponders were built to the same specifications as those found on escape pods and drop pods; they're virtually indestructible!"_

 _"'Virtually' does not mean impossible! Case in point: the mere fact those transponders ended up shutting down!"_

 _"Commander, the thing_ you're _missing is that if those transponders had been damaged or destroyed in any way during the transit to the surface, then they wouldn't have activated_ **at all** _!"_

 _"Then how do you explain them shutting down!?"_

 _"Someone had to have turned them off!"_

"Hang on a second," Spaatz quietly interrupted, yet somehow managing to grab the attention of both Volkov and Luzader. "Are you saying, Major, that there's a possibility your team is alive?"

 _"Yes,"_ Volkov immediately said, while at the same time Luzader firmly and definitively announced, _"No."_

"Uh..." Spaatz slowly began as he looked at his subordinates. But before he could so much as get another word in, the two officers whirled around on each other.

 _"Oh, you can_ _ **not**_ _still be clinging to this fantasy of yours Major!"_ Luzader snapped. _"I'm sorry Major, but your team is dead! Period!"_

 _"Commander, you knew better than I the official story behind the Spartan Program. And I have no doubt you also know the rumors because, as you so smugly pointed out a couple hours ago, you're a part of ONI and gathering 'intel' is a part of your job,"_ Volkov coldly retorted. _"Considering all those factors, how can you not even consider the_ **possibility** _that Argon Team is alive?"_

 _"Because I can do the math Major! And I don't care what the official or unofficial story behind the Spartan's background is, it is physically_ **impossible** _for a human to survive that kind of fall!"_

"Gentlemen," Spaatz quietly but firmly called out, trying to catch their attention as the conversation was beginning to get alarmingly heated, but unlike before, both officers completely ignored him.

 _"And yet,"_ Volkov continued, _"it has happened before! ODSTs and Army Rangers do it all the time! And in training no less!"_

 _"That is under entirely different circumstances, and you know it!"_ Luzader snapped back. _"Both units are utilizing specifically designed pods for that very purpose under controlled circumstances! And yet, soldiers still die all the time due to accidents!"_

 _"And what would you call the prototype armor(3) Argon Team was wearing then!? Those have been_ **proven** _to survive that kind of treatment!"_

 _"Not after they've been blown up by a fucking nuke they haven't!"_

"Alright, that's ENOUGH!" Spaatz suddenly roared, causing both men to jump in surprise. He was beginning to see why it had taken them so long to report back to him. "This bickering is pointless, as there is obviously not enough information to draw a satisfactory conclusion. Therefore, we need to approach it from another angle. Let's approach it from a worst case scenario: Major Volkov's team is alive, but unable to defend themselves. How badly would we be compromised if those Spartans were captured alive?"

Both men looked startled, as if that very scenario had yet to occur to them. Spaatz patiently waited for an answer, but after a few seconds of them not meeting his eyes, Spaatz sighed.

"You don't know."

 _"The problem, sir,"_ Volkov said with obvious reluctance, _"is that a lot of what the Spartans would know,_ **we** _,"_ he gestured at himself and Luzader, _"wouldn't, simply because we don't have the clearance to know. Things like: past mission details and objectives. A list of colonies and bases they've been deployed to. Even the general specifications of the prototype armor they are wearing is unknown to us."_

 _"Plus, sir,"_ Luzader added, _"these Spartans are as human as you and I. There's no telling what sort of information they've managed to pick up over the course of their career. Some of it probably was classified."_

 _"Furthermore sir,"_ Volkov continued. _"There's evidence to suggest the Spartans have garnered quite some notoriety amongst the Covenant Empire. If the Covenant were to capture a Spartan, not necessarily even a live one, it could prove to be a massive morale boost for them."_

"So basically gentlemen, what you're telling me is that it does even matter if your team is alive or not, it's in the UNSC's best interest to secure whatever is left?" Spaatz asked. "Alright then. Options?"

" _MAC rounds sir,"_ Luzader promptly suggested. _"Prior to contacting you sir, we were able to narrow our search area down to seven potential crash sites. A MAC round, even a low powered one, fired at each of those sites would ensure the complete and utter destruction of any potential remains."_

"No, out of the question," Spaatz immediately replied. "No weapons of mass destruction. Even if I was inclined to risk blasting holes into my own MLR, the situation in orbit right now is too tenuous; if I were to divert even _one_ ship or station to provide that kind of MAC support, it would weakened my fleet's defensive posture considerably and we would run the risk of being swept from our position at which point we'd lose _everything._ "

" _Then we use missiles and bombs instead sir. Surely your ships can fire a volley of Archer missiles without having to move from their positions?"_

" _Sir, I would like to object to the usage of indirect fire for this sort of mission,"_ Volkov interjected before Spaatz could reply. _"With so much at stake, we need to ensure that all trace of Argon Team and their equipment have been completely eliminated. In order to accomplish that with indirect, we'd need to score a direct hit on their crash site. But, given our current lack of intel, that would obviously be impossible."_

"So what do you propose we do then Major?" Spaatz asked.

" _We send in a ground detachment. A team of sappers, escorted by a squad of riflemen perhaps, go in with thermite and burn all traces of the Spartans. It's the only way to be a hundred percent sure Argon Team and their effects have been secured."_ Volkov paused. _"I would like to lead the detachment."_

Spaatz raised an eyebrow at that last request, but ignored it for the moment in lieu of focusing on the first part. "I thought most of your support elements had yet to arrive in system Major?"

" _That is correct sir, which is why I would need to requisition a detachment from troops already deployed in the city."_

"I was under the impression that your team was still classified, need to know information."

" _Yes sir, it still is."_

"And you think you'll be able to find enough soldiers already on the surface with the proper security clearance to know about said team?"

" _Well sir, I only need enough to fill one detachment. But with that being said, the detachment doesn't need to know what we're looking for, only that it's crucial to the survival of the UNSC and humanity as a whole. Admittedly though, that can only be accomplished if I'm leading the team."_

Spaatz gave him an odd look. "You're only requesting _one_ detachment?"

" _Yes sir."_

"But Commander Luzader just said there were seven potential crash sites. Furthermore, reports from the ground seem to indicate the Covenant are also searching for your team. If you only have one detachment, how do you plan on reaching your team before the Covenant do?"

" _By ensuring the Covenant are completely and utterly distracted by other matters. Sir, it is my understanding that elements of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Force has already arrived within the system. If you could insert them into the city itself, the influx of UNSC reinforcements will put the vast majority of the Covenant forces on the defensive, preventing them from effectively continuing their search and hopefully buying my detachment enough time to locate and secure Argon Team and their effects."_

"'Hopefully,'" Spaatz echoed. "I'll admitted Major, that's not quite a word I was interested in hearing at the moment."

" _I'll be the first to admit sir, this is not a foolproof plan. However, it is the best option we have at the moment."_

Spaatz mentally sighed. Well, he had been planning on inserting the 9th MEF into the city already. "I suppose you'll be requisitioningan ODST unit from the 9th MEF?"

" _Uh, no sir, I wasn't planning on it. In fact, I was hoping to requisition a unit from the Army airborne division that was inserted about half an hour ago."_

"Oh?" Spaatz asked, surprised. "And why is that?"

" _Multiple reasons sir, first and foremost: I've seen the reports regarding the situation on the ground sir, and I know we're going to need all the Marines we've got just to hold the city, including all the ODSTs. The Airborne, on the other hand, we can afford to have allocated to other task."_

Spaatz considered what Volkov had just told him. While his logic was sound, Spaatz couldn't help but think there were other reasons why Volkov was insisting on using Army troopers instead of Marines.

Still, he supposed it didn't matter. This mission needed to be accomplished. _Who_ accomplished it was irrelevant.

"You have a name for this operation?" Spaatz finally asked.

" _Yes sir. Operation White Knuckle."_

Spaatz almost snorted. White Knuckle. How apt.

"Very well Major, you have a go. Coordinate with my aide-de-camp for whatever supplies and equipment you may need. Commander Luzader, keep me informed on the progress of the operation. That is all. You're both dismissed."

Both Volkov and Luzader immediately snapped to attention before their holograms disappeared, leaving Spaatz to stand there, mentally reviewing everything that had just been discussed.

"Kanin," he finally said, blinking as Kanin's avatar abruptly re-appeared. "Have you been informed about our situation?"

"Yes Admiral. I'm currently discussing the finer details with Major Volkov at the moment, as we speak. He should be ready to execute the operation within the next half hour."

"Good. Inform me the moment he does. In the meantime though?"

"Sir?"

Spaatz cleared his throat. "Send in the Marines."

 **XXXXX**

 **UNSC** _ **Gallipoli**_ **(CVA-171)(4), High Orbit, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
1300**

 **Private First Class Adel Savaschi**

"This is some bullshit man," Private First Class Adel Savaschi snapped as he walked back to his team.

To Adel's irritation, his friend and team leader, Corporal Samuel "Sam" Yilmaz didn't even bother looking up from the Rubik cube he was messing around with.

"What's the fucking problem _now,_ " Sam asked, sounding bored.

Adel frowned at Sam's disinterested tone, but he quickly rallied.

"I was just talking to Marvin," Adel said as he jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction he had just come from. "You know, that sniper from H&S Company? The one that looks like the fucking Juggernaut?"

The third and last member of their team, Lance Corporal Isaac "X" Xanthus looked up from the data pad he was reading. "Yeah," he said. "Lance Corporal Mobuto(5). What about him?"

Adel noticed Sam finally looking up and Adel mentally grinned to himself, glad he finally had his team's attention. "Well, I just talking to him, right? Shooting the shit, trying to find something to do, right? Well, he fucking told me that the fucking _Army_ is in the middle of deploying to the surface, right now!"

He paused to allow Sam and X a chance to react, but instead, all they did was stare at him with an expectant look on their faces. After a few moments of silence, X finally spoke up.

"Yeah…?" he cautiously prompted. "And…?"

Adel stared at him. "What do you mean 'and?' The Army is deploying. We're not."

"…so?"

"'So?'" Adel sputtered. "So it's a bunch of fucking bullshit! We should be the ones going down first, not the fucking _Army!_ "

Sam immediately threw his hands into the air. "Really? _Really?_ That's what's got your panties in a twist!?"

"The Marines are always the first to fight," Adel insisted. "Everybody knows that! _Everybody!"_

"The Army got here before we did," X pointed out. "Why wouldn't they get deployed first? Honestly, I'm more curious as to _which unit_ is here in system. I heard it was an airborne division."

Adel waved his hand dismissively. "Who the fuck cares X? Soldiers: they're all the fucking same. Bunch of fucking casuals running around with automatic weapons, thinking they know how to fight a war. What Command should have done was send in some Warriors: us!"

"You know, I like thumping my chest just as much as the next guy," Sam drily noted, and Adel glanced at him, only to feel a stab of irritation as he realized Sam had already turned his attention back to his Rubik cube. "But in this case, I'm all for letting the Army deploying first. Fuck it: let them be the first to fight."

Adel stared at him in shock. "How can you say that!?"

Sam gave him a stare that clearly said he thought Adel was being an idiot.

"You realize by them going in first, they'll be the ones to soak up most of the plasma fire?" Sam pointed out. "I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to die on some shithole planet."

"What, like meat-shields?" Adel asked out loud after a moment of consideration.

Sam raised an eyebrow. "Yeah. It's what the Army's good for, right?"

"I guess that makes sense," Adel allowed after a moment's pause. "It's just, we're so fucking close to finally seeing some action! We've been sitting here for like, an hour already. When are they going to send us in!?"

Sam gave an indifferent shrug before returning to his Rubik cube.

"You know Adel," X airily commented, "They say 'patience is a virtue.'"

Adel couldn't stop the derisive snort from escaping him. "And which one of your philosopher friends said that? Wait, let me guess: Confucius? Or, wait, was it Pluto?"

"My mother," X casually corrected while giving Adel an odd look. "And I think you meant Pl **a** to."

"What?"

"You said 'Pluto,' which was the Roman god of the underworld. Or the goofy dog from that cartoon," X added with a shrug. "Plato with an 'A,' on the other hand, was the ancient Greek philosopher."

"Whatever," Adel said dismissively. "They're all the same."

"Bottom line is," Sam suddenly interjected, "we get sent in when Command sends us in. And until that time, you know, chill the fuck out. Sit down or something."

Adel was about to protest, as he still wanted to complain, but seeing at how disinterested his teammates were, he relented. Shoving his helmet aside so that there was room on the deck, Adel plopped himself down onto the ground. Immediately feeling bored, he looked around for something to do.

"You still working on that?" he asked as he watched Sam fumble around with his toy.

"Yeah," Sam bluntly said. "This is not exactly the easiest thing to solve you know."

"Well, I solved it in like, five minutes," Adel declared.

Sam paused in his actions to raise an eyebrow. "And how'd you do that?"

"Oh, I just took the stickers off," Adel casually replied.

Sam let out a loud snort. "Of course _you_ would do something like that."

"What does _that_ mean!?" Adel aggressively demanded.

"Means you're an idiot."

Adel opened his mouth to protest, but then closed it after a moment's thought.

"Okay, fair enough," he admitted.

Sam merely snorted and turned back to his cube. In the meantime, Adel glanced in X's direction. X was still busy reading his data pad, looking completely enthralled, and the sight caused a surge of jealousy to swell up inside Adel; how could his teammates be so preoccupied, and leave him to sit around, bored out of his mind?

Feeling more than slightly annoyed, Adel shoved his hands into his pockets, only to pause as he touched something. Pulling it out, he realized it was a short piece of paracord. A wicked grin slowly appeared on his face.

As subtly as he could so as to not attract X's attention, Adel scooted over until he was sitting right next to his teammate. Fortunately, X was too distracted by his reading to notice anything was amiss. Then, very carefully, Adel lifted the piece of string and began sliding it across X's screen. Slowly, millimeter by millimeter, Adel sneaked it forward, trying to see how far he could get it before X noticed.

"Cut it out," X suddenly said without looking up and Adel hastily withdrew the string and hid it behind his back.

"Cut what out?" Adel replied as innocently as he could.

He could see X rolling his eyes but aside from that, X didn't do anything, causing Adel to mentally start grinning. As soon as X returned to his reading though, Adel pulled out the string and started the process all over again. This time however, he wasn't able to go as far before X's head snapped up, and he glared at Adel.

"Dude, I'm trying to read here," he announced.

"What?" Adel innocently replied, even as he continued to inch the string forward. "I'm not doing anything."

X flicked the string off his screen. "I'm serious Adel, cut it out," he firmly stated, causing Adel to snicker.

"Okay dude, whatever," he said.

An annoyed look passed over X's face, but for the most part, he didn't seem inclined to do anything about it. Shooting Adel one last glare, he returned to his reading.

This time Adel waited until X looked like he was thoroughly distracted, before trying again. He started to creep the string forward, but before he could go more than a couple of centimeters forward, X immediately grabbed the string, ripped it out of Adel's hands, and hurtled it halfway across the room.

Adel stared at X in shock for a couple of seconds, before the anger started seeping in and in retaliation, he slapped X's data pad out of his hands.

"What the _fuck_ Adel!?" X immediately snapped as he swooped down to recover his pad. "What the fuck is your goddamn problem?"

"My problem? What's _your_ fucking problem asshole?" Adel snapped back, just as heatedly.

"My problem is, I'm trying to get some reading in before we have to deploy, but some fucking _**cunt**_ keeps bugging the shit out of me!" X seethed. "Seriously, fuck off Adel!"

"Fuck you!" Adel snarled back. "Chill the fuck out Isaac, it was just a joke! Where's your goddamn sense of humor? Jesus Christ!"

X shoved him.

Adel immediately leapt to his feet but before he could get anywhere, a heavy hand landed on his shoulder.

"Knock it off you two," Sam snapped as he forced Adel to sit back down. Adel tried to resist, but he had no leverage and plus, Sam was a lot bigger than he was. "X, go back to your happy place. Adel, what the fuck? Grow the fuck up and fucking leave X alone, holy shit."

Adel tried to protest, but Sam sent a death glare in his direction, causing Adel to relent.

"He fucking started it," Adel nevertheless mumbled as Sam released him.

"Don't give a shit," Sam retorted. "Go find something else to do besides bothering X before _**I**_ find you something."

"Is there a problem here Corporal?"

Adel's head snapped up at the stranger's voice, and he turned around to see a lieutenant, one of the newly assigned ones to the company, standing behind him with a disapproving look on his face.

"No Lieutenant Silva(6)," Sam respectfully said. "My Marines were just burning off a little bit energy. Everything is fine now sir." He finished that last part with a glare directed at Adel, and Adel resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

"That's nice Corporal," Silva condescendingly said. "But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about your helmets."

Adel looked around, confused. Neither he nor any of his teammates had their helmets on at the moment.

"Sir?" Sam asked, sounding just as confused as Adel felt.

"Why aren't you wearing them?" Silva elaborated.

"Because it's rather hot in here sir," Sam replied. "And these helmets are also rather heavy.

Adel watched as Silva's lips curled up in a sneer.

"Corporal, the MEU commander has put this entire battalion on full alert status, did he not?" Silva asked.

"He did sir," Sam confirmed.

"And part of being on alert status, Corporal, is that all Marines need to be ready to fight at a moment's notice. Which means, having all your protective gear on and ready to be used!" Silva barked. "What do you think would happen if the Covenant were to suddenly attack us right now Corporal?"

"Well, seeing as how we're on a ship at the moment sir, I would hope the Navy would shoot back first," Sam dispassionately replied.

Adel did his best to avoid giggling as Silva's eyes narrowed.

"Are you trying to be insubordinate with me Corporal?" Silva growled.

"No sir. But, with all due respect sir, it takes, like, five seconds to put our helmets back on," Sam pointed out.

"Probably less than that," X quietly commented.

"Probably less than that, sir," Sam echoed, inclining his head in X's direction.

"... Corporal, if you had any sense to think for yourself, you would have become an officer. But you didn't, and here we are," Silva stated, and Adel felt his hackles rise at the condescending tone and arrogance in Silva's voice. "Put your helmets on Devil Dogs, and don't ever take them off unless I give you expressed permission to do so. Is that clear Marines?"

"Or would you rather be NJP'd?" he added, seeing their hesitation.

"No sir," Sam emphatically answered. He turned to X and Adel. "Alright Team 2, you heard Lieutenant Silva: get your helmets on."

Adel silently grabbed his helmet off the deck and placed it on his head. He waited for Silva's approval, only to see the man staring at him with a pointed look on his face. Suppressing a groan, Adel reached up and secured his chinstrap.

"Good," Silva finally said. "And keep it that way."

Without so much as another word, Silva spun around on one heel and walked away.

Adel waited until the man was out of earshot before reaching up to undo his chinstrap, but Sam quickly caught his eye and shook his head.

"Don't push it," Sam warned. "This might be retarded as hell, but Silva has the authority to yank you from this team and confine you to the ship if he feels so inclined."

Adel quickly lowered his hand. The sounds of footsteps approaching them caused him to tense up, but it turned out to only be his section leader, Sergeant Jaff.

"You guys alright?" he asked them. "Just saw what happened."

Sam viciously spat in the direction Silva had gone. "What's his fucking problem?" he snarled. "Who died and made him the Commandant of the entire Marine Corps?"

"No one, he's just an asshole. Unfortunately, he's also a well-connected one: I heard his uncle is some kind of bigshot in the ODST," Jaff explained, before sighing. "But, and I'm sorry to say, you guys are going to have to get used to him. Company commander has decided to go ahead and attach all the support weapons teams to the infantry platoons before we head down, and you guys were just reassigned to Silva's 3rd Platoon."

"What?" Adel loudly exclaimed. "You got to be kidding me! We're going to have to deal with that asshole all day? Fuck that! Thanks a lot Sergeant."

"Non nobis solum nati sumus(7)," X muttered.

"Hey, wasn't my call," Jaff protested, as all present sort of pretended X hadn't just said anything. At this point, everyone in the company was used to X randomly dropping quotations and they had all learned to just roll with it. "It was the Skipper's. And I can't countermand his orders unless I have a very good reason to."

Adel grimaced, but kept his complaints to himself. He knew there was nothing that could be done.

"But, look on the bright side: at least you'll be under Staff Sergeant Reynolds'(8) command."

Adel immediately perked up at that. In his opinion, Staff Sergeant Malcom Reynolds was one of the most badass Marines in the entire regiment.

"Get your stuff guys, and head over to 3rd Platoon," Jaff continued. "Skipper wants all platoons situated before we start loading up in the Pelicans.

Adel enthusiastically nodded, his anger at Silva already forgotten. Leaping to his feet, he grabbed his rucksack and tossing it onto his shoulders.

"Dude, this is so fucking cool," Adel enthusiastically exclaimed, awkwardly holding onto his equipment as he and his team headed to where 3rd Platoon was located. "We get to fight with Staff Sergeant Reynolds himself! You know, I heard he used to be, like, an operator for some Innie group decades ago."

"Really? I heard he had been a smuggler before he enlisted in the Marines," X commented. "Had his own ship and everything.

"No, that was afterwards; he was an Innie first, but then the UNSC kicked his group's ass, so he ended up becoming a smuggler," Sam corrected, with just barely a hint of a sneer.

"Is that right?" X asked, surprised. "Well, if he was an Innie, how and why'd he join the UNSCMC? Would have thought he wouldn't have wanted to join his former enemy. Hell, I would have thought ONI wouldn't have let him enlist."

"Supposedly he was on Harvest the day the Covenant invasion began," Sam explained. "What I heard, he and his crew ended up trying to rescue a bunch of civilians. Held an entire battalion of Covenant warriors at bay for hours. Managed to get, like, a hundred civilians off-world before the end."

"Of course, a bunch of his crew ended up dying," Adel added.

Sam nodded. "Yeah, among others, I heard he lost his pilot, his ship's preacher, and his girlfriend. Supposedly she ended up dying in his arms. Last words and all that."

"Damn," X whistled. "He certainly got the short end of the stick. So, what, he enlisted to get revenge or something?"

"That, and while his lover was dying, he got down on his knees and swore a blood oath to the old gods that he would hunt down and kill every single Covenant warrior who dared defile the galaxy, starting on that day until his last day..."

The entire group stopped mid-stride to stare incredulously at Adel, who sheepishly grinned.

"That... last part might not have been true," Adel meekly allowed. "But it's what I heard!"

"I think someone was trying to take the mick out of you when you were told that Adel," Sam drily noted as they continued their walk. "At any case, Staff Sergeant Reynolds is a pretty good platoon sergeant from what I hear; hopefully he'll be able to keep Silva in check."

Adel nodded in agreement.

Reaching the spot where 3rd Platoon was camped out, Adel watched as Sam walked up to one of the nearby Marines.

"Hey Private, we're looking for Staff Sergeant Reynolds. Know where he is?"

"Yeah, he's over there," the man said, pointing at a lanky brunette man sitting in the corner of the room. "Hey Staff Sergeant!"

Reynolds got up and walked over to them.

"Yeah Tracey," he said as he walked up. "What's shiny?"

"These gents are here to see you," Tracey announced, gesturing at Adel and his team.

"Staff Sergeant Reynolds? Corporal Yilmaz, 3rd Assault Squad, Weapons Platoon. Skipper said we're getting reassigned to your platoon?"

Reynolds' face immediately brightened. "Yeah, I heard something like that. So, you're my team of assaultmen, huh? Well, come on."

Adel quickly picked up his stuff again as Reynolds brought them back to the corner he had originally come from.

"Find a seat folks," Reynolds commanded. "Ain't got much to do 'till we get sent down. Y'all be attached to platoon HQ, so get mighty comfy with the Marines 'round here. Gonna be seein' a lot of them in the next few days."

Adel nodded in acknowledgement. Finding an empty spot, he dropped his stuff, letting it hit the deck with a loud _thump_ , before taking a seat. Settling in, he took a look around. There weren't too many Marines in this corner, aside from the assigned platoon corpsman, a forward observer, the RTO, and Reynolds himself. The presence of all these support personnel made Adel realize this corner was probably reserved for the staff of 3rd Platoon's headquarters. Fortunately, Silva was nowhere to be found.

"You Marines shiny over there?" Adel heard Reynolds call out. "Need anything? Food? Water?"

"Nah Staff Sergeant, we good," Sam replied.

"Y'all sure? Calm before the storm Marines: best enjoy it."

Sam glanced at X and Adel, who both shook their heads.

"I don't like to eat before getting on a Pelican," X explained. "Makes me air sick. Like, violently."

Adel could see Reynolds grimacing. "Well, we ain't be wanting that, now would we? Least you fellows can take your helmets off. Might as well be comfortable."

Reynolds walked off, leaving Adel and his team in shock.

"Did he...?" X asked.

Sam snorted.

"God damn, I hate this fucking job," he muttered out loud.

For his part, all Adel could was shake his head.

* * *

1\. **POMCUS** was a real US Army system. As mentioned here, the idea behind the system was to preposition equipment at certain locations in order to speed up deployment time, only in the US Army's case, it was prepositioned in Europe (specifically Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands,) and intended for use in the event the Soviet Union launched a conventional invasion of Europe. Obviously, with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the system was never needed, and eventually disassembled.

POMCUS was intended to be used in conjunction with Exercise Reforger ( **re** turn of **for** ces to Germany,) though I'm not going to get into that here.

2\. **9th ME** F: the 9th Marine Expeditionary Force is actually a canon unit. It was mentioned in the official novel, _Halo: Contact Harvest_ where it was Sergeant Avery Johnson's parent unit. (Sidenote: if this was an actual USMC unit, it would actually be written out as "IX Marine Expeditionary Force.")

3\. Volkov referring to the armor Argon Team was/is wearing is intended to be a character error. The armor the Spartan team was wearing is nothing more than the regular Mjolnir Mark IV power armor which was the last version not to incorporate energy shields. Volkov refers to it as a "prototype" because he doesn't know better.

4\. **UNSC _Gallipoli_** is named for the Gallipoli Campaign of WWI. In February of 1915, the Entente powers (primarily the British Empire and her colonies, most notably forces from both Australia and New Zealand) attempted an amphibious invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula, which at the time was part of the Ottoman Empire (who of course, was one of the Central powers.) The objective of the campaign was to seize control of the strait that provided a supply route to Russia, as well as capture the capital of the Ottoman Empire, Constantinople, which could potentially have knocked the Ottomans out of the war.

Due to a variety of reasons, the invasion ultimately failed, with the attack being called off after eight months of warfare and massive casualties on both sides. Among the Entente, the campaign was a large and humiliating defeat and forced a number of political changes in the British government, whereas it was a great victory for the Ottomans, however the campaign did cause massive damage to their natural resources, arguably weakening the Ottoman's long term ability to wage war.

With that, on an entirely different note, I want to mention that the UNSC _Gallipoli_ is intended to be an Orion-class assault carrier. According to Halopedia, there are three carrier classes utilized by the UNSC Navy, and I just wanted to take this opportunity to explain just how I think the carrier roles should be.

I mentioned back in chapter 16 I feel like naval carriers would play more of an amphibious warfare ship role than the traditional super aircraft carrier role, but more specifically, the way I see it is as follows:

\- the _Epoch_ -class heavy carriers, which are the largest class of Navy carriers (of which, the UNSC _Liaoning, São Paulo,_ and _Illustrious_ from chapter 16 were intended to be,) are the Halo equivalents of modern day amphibious assault ships. In modern days, amphibious assault ships are vessels that are capable of transporting marine expeditionary units and as such, come equipped with all manner of features: well decks in order to be able to launch landing craft, amphibious vehicles, and hovercrafts, a flight deck to launch either helicopters or V/STOL fixed-wing aircraft, as well as hangers to store and maintain said aircraft. Modern day examples of amphibious assault ships include the US Navy's _Wasp_ and America-classes, as well as the French Navy's _Mistral-_ class.

\- Orion-class assault carriers, which are the second largest navy carriers, are intended to be similar to amphibious transport docks. Amphibious transport docks are similar to amphibious assault ships in that they (usually) have well decks, flight decks, and hanger facilities, but (usually) no capability for launching and recovering fixed-wing aircraft. IRL examples include the US Navy's _San-Antonio_ -class and the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy's Type 071.

\- finally, the _Poseidon_ -class light carriers are the equivalent of dock landing ships. Like before, there are usually well decks and flight decks, but (usually) no hangers. (Though, obviously in the Halo universe, that would be different.) Real life examples are the US Navy's _Whidbey Island_ and _Harpers Ferry_ -class of ships.

5\. **Mobuto** is a canon character that first appeared posthumously in the Halo official novel, _Halo: The Flood._ In the novel, then Staff Sergeant Marvin Mobuto's body is discovered by the Master Chief John-117 in the depths of the Library during his quest to recover the Index. Having been mutilated by the Flood so badly, not even Flood Infection Forms could make use of it, the sight of Mobuto's body inspired the Master Chief to complete his mission.

6\. **2nd Lieutenant Gustavo Silva** is not a canon character, but he is intended to be related to one: Major Antonio Silva, an ODST officer who appeared as a minor antagonist in the novel, _Halo: The Flood._ (He's the one in charge of the construction and defense of Alpha Base on the Halo ring. He's also the one that wanted to bring a Flood-infested Covenant battlecruiser back to Earth.) As mentioned when LT Silva appeared in my other story, _Missing in Action_ (chapter 2,) in my head-canon, Gustavo is the nephew of Antonio Silva.

7\. " **Non nobis solum nati sumus"** is a Latin quote from Roman statesman and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero's treatise _On Duties_ (Latin: _De Officiis,)_ though according to Wikipedia, Cicero himself took the quote from Plato's _Letter of Archytas._ Translated into English, it means "Not for ourselves alone are we born."

8\. **Staff Sergeant Malcom Reynolds** is a canon character. He first appeared in the first level of _Halo 3,_ though he's a gunnery sergeant in that game. He's one of the sergeants helping Johnson look for Master Chief in the woods after he crash lands. His first name has actually never been revealed, but given the fact that his face actor is Nathan Fillion, who is most famous for playing Captain Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds on the 2002 scifi TV show _Firefly,_ I think it's pretty clear Gunnery Sergeant Reynolds is supposed to be an expy of Captain Reynolds, and as such, that's how I'm going to be treating the character.

Marine Trivia

Seeing as how this is the first time among all my stories I've had a Marine as a main character, I thought it would be helpful to create a list of... trivia (I guess that would be the right word) about the Marines I've picked up over the years. Most of this strictly pertains only to the United States Marine Corps, but seeing as how the UNSC Marine Corps is specifically mentioned in canon as having been based on the USMC, I figured the same rules would apply.

When reading this list, try to keep in mind that my information is from all over the place, so I can't necessarily source the information, and it might not be necessarily accurate any longer.

So I guess the first place to start would be the difference between a Soldier and a Marine. In the English language, a marine is merely a TYPE of soldier, but in the US, a Soldier is specifically a member of the United States Army while members of the USMC are strictly Marines. The idea being, with the Marine Corps being a more elite force when compared to the Army (whether this is entirely true or not is debatable), "Marine" is a title one has to earn, and not simply given. To give an analogy, it's kind of like the difference between calling someone a "mister" (or missus) versus calling them a "doctor." You want to insult a Marine? Call them a soldier. (This is also why people in boot camp are simply called "recruits" as opposed to Marine: as they haven't graduated yet, or proven they can graduate from boot camp, they thus haven't earned the title of "Marine.")

Speaking of insults, one of the most serious insults you can call a Marine is "boot." What is a boot? A boot is simply an inexperienced Marine. A newbie, so to speak. The term usually refers to Marines who just graduated from training (hence the term boot, as in "boot camp,") but not always. A junior NCO going on his first combat tour, for example, would be considered a boot among his or her more salted brethren.

"Once a Marine, always a Marine" is how the saying goes, which is why one of the other more grievous insults to call a Marine is to call them an "ex-Marine." In the English language, an "ex" refers to something or someone that had been, but is no longer. Going back to the idea that "Marine" was a title one had to earn, once you've earned that right to call yourself a Marine, you will always be part of that Brotherhood and there is no way to lose that, which is why you can't be an "ex"...

...unless you fuck up so badly you end up getting kicked out of the military. In the US military, that's known as a "dishonorable discharge," and that's usually reserved for those individuals who have committed crimes so grievous, they would be considered crimes in the civilian world. Like war crimes. So, in the USMC, an "ex-Marine" is anyone who received a dishonorable discharge. (In case anyone is curious, a "former-Marine" is what you call a Marine who was "honorably discharged" from the service.)

Taking a step back to boot camp, something to note: the USMC doesn't actually have Drill Sergeants. That's an Army term. What the Marines do have are "Drill Instructors." I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure why that is, but I do believe it has something to do with the fact that in boot camp, recruits are supposed to call their trainers "sir" or "ma'am" to get them in the habit of using those terms in their everyday speech. However, because you're never supposed to call a sergeant or NCO "sir/ma'am" (as those terms are reserved for officers, commissioned and warrant,) but most DIs are in fact, NCOs, the workaround is to simply call them "instructors." (The Army works around that simply by having their recruits call their instructors "sergeant," though that has fluctuated through the years.)

Speaking of how to address the sergeant ranks in the USMC. In the Army, those between the ranks of E5 to E7 are simply called "Sergeant." It doesn't matter what type of sergeant they are, whether they be simple buck sergeants, staff sergeants, or sergeant first classes, they are simply known as "Sergeant." (Or Sar'nt. Sarge is not really a term used anymore and from what I've read, some Soldiers actually consider it insulting if you call them that.)

In the Corps, it's the complete opposite: you HAVE to refer to all NCOs by their full rank. So, if a Marine sees a corporal, s/he'll address them as "Corporal." But, if they see a gunnery sergeant or a staff sergeant, they have to address them as "Gunnery Sergeant and Staff Sergeant," respectively.

There doesn't seem to be an official reason for this, at least, none that I've seen. However, I have read explanations from Marines the reason for this is that it's a sign of respect, as, (as they put it,) NCOs in the Corps actually EARN their rank, as opposed to simply given their rank. (Marines get promoted at a far slower rate than, say, the Army.) And while usage of the full rank is a rule in garrison, I'd wage it's less strictly enforced in other situations. Like, say, in the middle of a firefight.

Other interesting tidbits: the Marines usually call their bases "camps" (ex. Camp Lejeune or Camp Pendleton,) whereas the Army usually calls their bases "fort" (ex. Fort Bragg, Fort Benning, Foot Knox.) The terms are used as a reflection of both services respective nature: as the expeditionary force of the United States, the Marines are constantly on the move, hence the term "camp" which implies a more temporary nature. In contrast, the Army is more stationary, more permanent, hence the term "fort." (This is not a one hundred percent rule as the Army has and does use the term camp for their bases.)

Another interesting fact is that there are no such thing as "infantry" units in the Marine Corps. Let me first clarify: there are absolutely infantry units in the Marine Corps. They just simply aren't called that. What are they call then? Well, "Marine." As in, 1st Marine Regiment, 6th Marine Division, etc. Anytime you see a unit with the word "infantry" in its title (ex. 1st Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, 116th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, etc.,) it's an Army unit. Strangely enough, artillery units in the Marine Corps are also simply called Marine units (ex. the 10th, 11th, 12th, and 14th Marine Regiments are all the current artillery regiments in the Marine Corps,) but I can't seem to find a reason for why that is.

You'll notice that I used the term "regiment" and "division." Like the Army, the Marine Corps also organizes their units into battalions, regiments, brigades, and divisions. However, whereas in the Army, there's a certain rigidity to units. Whereas a Soldier might identify themselves as being a part of say, the 101st Airborne Division, or the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, most Marines will usually just say they're Marines (as opposed to saying they're part of the 2nd Marine Division or the 7th Marine Regiment.)

There are two main reasons for that. As a whole, Marine units have a tendency to be more flexible in their organization, as they're designed for "plug and play" so to speak. What I mean by that is that theoretically, swap any two Marine units of the same type (say, 1st Tank Battalion with 2nd Tank Battalion,) and they should be able to do the exact same job to the exact same degree of success. The same can't be said about the Army. The 40th Infantry Division, for example, plays a radically different role from the 1st Cavalry Division, with both units utilizing different equipment, different tactics, and are even organized differently from each other (40th ID is not only an infantry division, but also belongs to the National Guard whereas the 1st Cav is an Army active duty armored division.)

The reason for the Army's rigidness when compared to the Marines ties in directly to the second reason for the different ways units are perceived in both branches: the Marine Corps is, and always has been, vastly smaller than the Army. For example, the largest the Marine Corps had ever been is during WW2 where it was able to field a grand total of six Marine divisions. In contrast, in the same time period, the US Army consisted of over 91 divisions, of which, 22 were assigned to the Pacific Theater.

Counting divisions is, of course, not the most accurate way of determining a service branch's size, as both the Army and the Marines had units that weren't organized into divisions but it does give you a good idea of just how different in size both organizations were and are.

With that in mind, there are some pretty big differences between the way Marine units are used verse the way the Army utilized theirs, but I'm not going to get into that in this chapter.

Hopefully you guys enjoyed and I'll see you next time.


	23. Chapter 23

Thorthemighty321:

I'll actually be completely honest, it hadn't really occurred to me, using Mobuto in my story, as he was only supposed to be a nod to canon, but now that you've mentioned it, I probably could use him in this story. I'll have to sit down and figure out exactly how and what I want to portray him as doing, but I'm sure I can figure something out. However, if you, or anyone else really, has any suggestions, I'm certainly open to new ideas.

Broman:

The chapter might have felt short simply because not a whole lot happened in terms of action, but the chapter itself is exactly 7,714 words long of story content (not including notes and responses.) On average, my chapters are about 9,096.67 words long, so yes, this was shorter than usual, but overall, it's only the seventh shortest chapter so far (shortest was chapter 17 at 2,697 words of story content.)

I don't really blame people for not knowing the different between the two, mainly because the USMC is very unique in terms of its size, culture, and role. The only other unit that could even remotely compare would really be Russia's VDV units, but even then (in my opinion,) they're nowhere near as famous as the USMC.

Which leads me to my next point: what would be the current status of the USMC (and the rest of the US Armed Forces) in the Halo universe. That is rather hard for me to answer as I don't feel like there's enough information in regards to how the US fell and how the United Republic of North America came to be. If it was the modern day United States, they would most definitely have their own military as politically and culturally, Americans are rather averse to being under someone else's command. However, five hundred years in the future, the United States we know is no longer around so really, it definitely could be whatever the reader wants it to be.

Me personally, I think just like any other colony, Earth would have their own Colonial and Provincial Militia units. I personally like the idea that some of the more famous US military units would have survived to the "modern day" (like the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions or the 1st Marine Division,) but I think those militias would be rather limited in numbers because, as the birthplace of the UNSC and humanity as a whole, Earth would be heavily stacked with UNSC military garrisons and bases, thus making a CM and PM somewhat redundant (similar to the way I felt about Reach, as mentioned in my notes for chapter 17.)

* * *

 **Chapter 23**

 **UNSC** _ **Gallipoli**_ **, High Orbit, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
1320**

 **Adel**

Adel drummed his fingers against the buttstock of his rifle, as he tried to avoid fidgeting. He was bored out of his mind. Being part of the first wave of Marines to be deployed to the planet was not turning out to be nearly as exciting as he thought it was going to be.

When the word had come down from Command for the Marines to begin loading onto the Pelicans, Adel had figured that meant they were actually going to get deployed soon. But after five minutes of them just sitting there without moving, Adel realized all he had done was go from being bored aboard a Navy assault carrier, to being bored aboard a Marine Corps Pelican. Adel was seriously beginning to wonder if he was going to be able to make it to Actium before all the fighting ended.

Exasperating the situation was the fact that it was so damn uncomfortable inside the spacecraft. The D77H-TCI Pelican they were sitting in may have been designed to carry up to a squad of Marines across extremely long distances, but clearly the spacecraft designers didn't have the comfort of the Marines in mind when they built the damn thing. The seats they were sitting on were made of metal and lacked cushioning of any sort, and they appeared to have been intended for a midget as Adel barely had enough room on either side of him to move his arms. Furthermore, there must have been something wrong with the circulation fan because, not only was it starting to get rather warm in there, it was also starting to smell.

In short, Adel was hot, tired, grumpy, and absolutely ready to kill any inhuman son of a bitch that looked at him wrong. Which, now that he thought about it, might have actually been the point.

Deciding he need something else to focus on besides his discomfort, Adel glanced around the Pelican. He was sitting in the center of the spacecraft on the starboard side, with Sam and X wedged in on either side of him. At the end of the row sitting next to the ramp was Reynolds because, as the highest ranking Marine on board, he was expected to be the first one off when they finally landed on the battlefield.

Sitting directly across from Reynolds with his arm resting on the ramp controls, was one of the Pelican's crew chiefs. Despite wearing the same enclosed helmet with opaque visor that every other air winger in the MEU wore, Adel could tell the man was just as uncomfortable in this enclosed space as Adel was, and the sight honestly caused Adel to cheer up a bit. After all, if a Marine, whose sole purpose in life was to sit in fully loaded Pelicans such as this one, was uncomfortable, then clearly this situation was rather abnormal. And therefore, _Adel's_ discomfort was the result of the abnormality of the situation, and not because he was a pussy or anything like that...

At any case, the rest of the Pelican was filled up with the remaining members of 3rd Platoon's HQ section. Aside from the regularly assigned Marines, there were also the support weapons teams: Adel's own three man assault team, a three man general purpose machine gun team, and finally a three man 60mm mortar team. Lieutenant Silva, fortunately, was not present, having decided that it was in the platoon's best interest he rode down to the surface with 1st Squad instead.

All told, there was a grand total of fourteen fully armed and equipped Marines sitting in the back of this Pelican. Coupled with their weapons, all the munitions they were carrying in their rucksacks, and their extra supplies, it made for an extremely tight space.

"Goddammit," Adel exclaimed, his impatience and discomfort finally getting the better of him. "When are we fucking leaving!?"

"I don't know how many times I can say, 'When they fucking tell us,'" Sam immediately replied, without even bothering to lift his head. "Seriously: shut the fuck up already."

"Man, I wish I was in charge," Adel grumbled. "We'd be halfway to the planet by now."

"If you wanted to be in charge, you should have joined the Army," X murmured.

As best as he could, Adel turned to face X. "Why the fuck would I ever want to do that?"

X jumped, as if he hadn't expected Adel to hear him. "Nothing," he said, "it's just the Army promotes people faster than the Corps does. My twin brother is in the Army; we enlisted at the same time but I'm still an E-3 while he's already an E-5. Of course, mother always did say he was the responsible one," he added with a shrug.

Adel sneered. "The Army, huh? Guess you got all the brains X. Why the fuck would he want to join that band of pussies when he could have been a badass warrior like you and me?"

"He got a signing bonus plus, prospects were better in terms of long term career opportunities. Or at least, that's what he told me," X explained. "Of course, I never cared about that. Soon as I get my four years in, I am _out_."

"Not planning on being a lifer, huh X?" Sam asked.

X laughed. "Fuck no. Why the fuck would I want to do that?"

"Yeah, you didn't strike me as the type," Sam noted with a wiry grin before leaning forward so he could glance at Adel. "Not like Adel, huh? Adel, you ain't ever getting out, are you?"

"The only place I want to get out from is this damn dropship," Adel uncomfortably growled, and then immediately cringed. He hadn't meant to admit that out loud.

To his surprise, Reynolds, who Adel didn't even know was listening in, burst out laughing.

"Yeah, kinda tight in here, ain't it Private?" he commented, making Adel instantly feel better about himself. "Reminds me of a job I pulled years ago: we was transportin' cattle. Lawd, you would not believe the smell!"

Reynolds abruptly stopped speaking and Adel stared at him curiously before realizing Reynolds had his hand pressed against the side of his headset. At the same time, a loud whine filled the air and the entire vehicle began vibrating as the Pelican's engines were activated. Adel quickly sat up in his seat in anticipation, though he dared not breathe, least it turn out he was mistaken.

His fears were unfounded though as a moment later, Reynolds unbuckled himself from his seat and stood up.

"Marines!" he loudly yelled to be heard over the increasing sounds of the Pelican's engines. "The light is green!"

"WOOOHOO!" Adel couldn't help but immediately cheer. "Fucking finally!"

Beside him, he could hear Sam facepalming, but Adel didn't care; they were finally moving out.

On the other side of the cargo bay, Adel could see a hint of a smirk appear on Reynolds' face, but he hid it well.

"Lock 'n load Marines," was all he said instead as he lifted his rifle and inserted a magazine.

Gleefully pulling out a magazine he had hooked on his sleeve for this very purpose, Adel jammed it into his BR55 battle rifle and chambered a round, the rifle making a _very_ satisfying racking noise. As he did that, Adel could feel the Pelican rotating as it moved into launch position.

 _"Attention all cargo and crew,"_ the Pelican pilot suddenly said over the internal intercom. _"We are T minus thirty seconds to launch."_

Adel could feel something heavy rumbling outside and even though he couldn't see what it was, he instinctively knew it was the hanger bay doors, and Adel suddenly felt a thrill of anticipation go down his spine as the realization that he was literally standing on the edge of the precipice struck him.

"SQUAD!" Reynolds yelled, drawing all attention to him. "What are we!?"

"UNSC MARINES STAFF SERGEANT!" Adel bellowed alongside everyone else, picking up on the rallying call.

"And what do Marines do!?"

"KILL!"

"What was that? I said: WHAT DO MARINES DO!?"

 **"KILL!"**

"WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU! _WHAT DO MARINES DO!?_ "

 _ **"KILLLLLL!"**_ Adel screamed at the top of lungs, even as he heard the pilots in the background counting, _"T minus ten, nine, eight..."_

"Oorah Marines!" Reynolds declared.

 _" - five, four, three, two, one... LAUNCH!"_

Adel was abruptly thrusted against his restraints as the Pelican dropped straight down. Before he even had a chance to gather his bearings, the pilots threw the Pelican into a tight barrel roll, and the maneuver caused Adel to reflexively grip his restraints as the adrenaline in his veins spiked. He quickly caught himself though, and thrusted his arms into the air like he was on a rollercoaster and let out a loud, "OOOOOORRRAAAAAAHHHHH!"

Laughing as maniacally as he could, Adel glanced over at his team to see how they were handling the ride. X was sitting in his seat, looking rather annoyed at Adel's screaming, but seemed relaxed for the most part. Sam, on the other hand, had completely tensed up, his hands tightly gripping his restraints while his eyes were squeezed shut.

At that sight, Adel couldn't help but let out another loud laugh. For all of Sam's chill, Sam was deathly afraid of flying.

"Come on Corporal!" Adel jeered, even as the pilots executed another series of maneuvers which threw everyone against the back of their seats. "Open your eyes at least you fucking pussy!"

"Shut the fuck up Private Savaschi before I fucking shoot you!" Sam snapped back, eyes determinedly remaining closed.

Adel just grinned in response, undeterred by Sam's threats of violence.

The intercom overhead suddenly crackled to life.

 _"…join the rest of the formation, right there. Uh, alright Marines, we're in the pipe. ETA, seven minutes to the LZ."_

Adel tightened his grip on his rifle in anticipation. Seven minutes. Seven minutes and he'd be on the ground where he would finally get his chance to bag a real-life alien. He could wait seven minutes. After all, there were no more obstacles left to stand in his way.

 _BEEPBEEPBEEP!_

 _"What the - contact,_ _ **contact**_ _! Enemy Banshees starboard side bearing one seven seven six!"_ the copilot yelled out.

 _"Evade, evade!"_

Adel was thrown hard against the back of his seat as the pilot threw the Pelican into a spin. He immediately lost all sense of orientation as his entire world spun, with the floor and the ceiling inverting, then reverting, and then inverting all within the span of seconds. Through the cockpit window, he could see all the Pelicans in the formation scattering in all directions as a green fuel rod cannon passed through their ranks.

"What the hell!?" Adel screamed as he struggled to recover. "I thought there was a stalemate right now!"

"A stalemate ain't a ceasefire!" Reynolds yelled back. "Big 'uns ain't firin', but the fighters are still active!"

Adel was thrown hard against his restraints as the pilot abruptly leveled out the Pelican.

 _"Super 6-3 to Golf Charlie Tango,"_ Adel heard the pilot yelling through the open cockpit door. _"Be advised, we have been engaged, out! Moonshine, all power to forward engines, get us out of this shit!"_

 _"Copy that Toad!"_ the copilot replied.

"Jarheads!" the pilot yelled over his shoulder. "Make sure you're really strapped it! This is going to get messy!"

"How much messier could it get?" Adel started to snarkily say, but he was forced to immediately swallow his words as the pilots threw the Pelican into a dive, the force of which shoved him against his seat with enough force, Adel actually found it hard to catch his breath.

Outside, electric blue plasma bolts were flying right by the Pelican, missing its hull by centimeters, but getting closer with each shot.

 _"Heads up Toad, we got three bandits, on our six!"_ the copilot hollered.

 _"I see 'em!"_

The pilot threw the Pelican into a wide loop and beside him, Adel could hear Sam practically whimpering, and normally Adel would have given him shit for it, but truth be told, it was taking Adel almost everything he had to not do the same. Then -

 _ **CLANK!**_

A loud yelp managed to worm its way between Adel's lips as something struck the roof of the Pelican, sending reverberations through the entire aircraft.

 _"We've been hit!"_ the copilot warned. _"Minor damage to the dorsal hull. Hull will hold, but we can't take another hit like that!"_

 _"God damn motherfuckers don't know when to quit, do they?"_ the pilot snarled. _"Where the fuck is our air support!?"_

 _"Don't know: damn flyboys are late as usual!"_

 _"Then we need to figure out a way out of this mess ourselves! Moonshine, find me some cover!"_

 _"Okay... there! Seventeen degrees, starboard! That burnt out wreck of a frigate!"_

 _"Got it! Marines, hang on!"_

That was the only warning Adel had before the pilot ignited the Pelican's portside maneuvering thrusters, causing the aircraft to execute a near ninety degree turn starboard on the spot. Adel nearly screamed out loud in pain as the force from a turn at those speeds played hell on his body, but he forced himself to bite down on his lip instead to avoid losing face in front of his friends. Not that it mattered as X clearly had no such compunctions.

"GAHHH!"

The Pelican suddenly straightened out and Adel let out a sigh of relief, but they clearly weren't out of the woods just yet. As the Pelican skimmed along the hull of the destroyed frigate, fuel rod cannons began raining down from above.

 _"Look out!"_

One fuel rod cannon slammed into the wreck about a hundred meters in front of them, tearing out a massive chunk of debris, which floated away from the destroyed frigate and into the Pelican's path. At the speeds they were traveling at, it was clear there was no way for the pilot to avoid the piece, which was about the size of an entire Longsword fighter.

 _"Moonshine, guns and rockets: fire!"_ the pilot blurted out. _"Blow a hole through that thing!"_

Outside, Adel could see rocket contrails and tracers shells from the dropship's 70mm nose cannon streak ahead of the Pelican as the copilot opened fire on the debris. Explosions ripped through the chunk, causing it to slowly drift apart, leaving a small hole that looked barely big enough for the Pelican to fit.

 _"Watch out Toad, you're going to have to thread the needle!"_

 _"I know! It's going to be tight! Marines, brace for impact!"_

Adel tried to keep his eyes open as the debris quickly filled the entire cockpit window, determined to go to his death by staring his killer straight in the eyes, but at the last possible second, he flinched and turned away.

The Pelican jerked and a loud screeching noise filled the air as the Pelican weaved through the hole, but it wasn't quite big enough and the Pelican ended up scraping the bottom of its hull against _something_. Still, the Pelican had made it through, and that was all that mattered for the moment.

 _"_ _ **INCOMING**_ _! Dive Toad,_ _ **DIVE**_ _!"_

The cockpit was lit up with radioactive green light as the fuel rod passed by overhead, missing the small boat by mere centimeters. Adel could see it start to curve upwards, then there was a brilliant orange flash of an explosion. Adel couldn't see what got hit from his angle, but obviously the pilots could as they began yelling:

 _"Oh shit! 6-1 just got hit! Super 6-1 just got hit! It's going down!"_

 _"Watch out watch out watch out!"_

Another Pelican, with its entire portside wing in shreds, began to pass right in front of the path of Adel's aircraft, putting both birds on a collision course. Adel could feel his Pelican swerving to the side as the pilot did his best to avoid a crash, but before they could get clear, the other Pelican simply exploded.

 _"Fuck!_ _ **BRACE**_ _!"_

The entire Pelican began to violently shake as it passed right through the rapidly expanding debris field. Adel flinched as something slammed into the cockpit window with enough force, it caused the outermost layer of the window to crack. Adel mentally braced for a following shot, but nothing happened.

 _"Goddammit that was close!"_ Adel heard the pilot exclaim instead.

 _"You said it man. Hey, at least our escorts_ finally _showed up."_

" _Good_ ," the pilot emphatically announced. _"Let those assholes deal with the Banshees. Let's hurry up and get these guys on the ground."_

 _"Copy that. Hey, crew? We're starting our descent."_

"God _damn_ ," Adel breathed as he released the breath of air he'd been holding. "Holy shit. We fucking made it."

A loud snort caught his attention, and Adel looked back to see Reynolds shaking his head.

"Don't celebrate yet Private: that was the easy part," he ominously stated.

All Adel could do was stare at him as flames began to lick at the window as the Pelican began its descent through Actium's atmosphere.

 _ **KABOOM!**_

Adel jerked as something exploded just outside the hull, causing the Pelican to shake.

 _ **KABOOMKABOOM!**_

Another two explosions went off in quick succession, and Adel looked around in alarm for the cause.

"Marines, we're experiencing some heavy flak up here!" the pilot yelled over his shoulder. "Might want to brace yourselves: we're not quite out of the shit just yet!"

Adel gritted his teeth as explosions continued to rip the sky around them apart. Through the cockpit window, Adel could see green streaks soaring through the sky, raising up from down below, only to exploded as soon as they close enough to the aircraft. Green flames licked at the window as the Pelican descended through the storm, and the sight reminded Adel of old videos he had seen of hurricane chasers flying through various hurricanes, only, instead of rain hitting the window, it was shrapnel.

 _"Five minutes until touchdown!"_ the pilot abruptly announced.

"Five minutes!" Reynolds repeated.

All of a sudden, the explosions ceased, leaving an eerie silence in its wake. At first, Adel wasn't sure why, but as he glanced through the window and saw they were beginning to pass through a cluster of skyscrapers, he realized it was because the Covenant AA could no longer target them. Adel started to sigh in relief, only to stop when he realized that meant the Pelican was only minutes away from landing in the middle of a battlefield. Somehow, that fact seemed far more exciting ten minutes and seventeen thousand meters ago.

 _"Three minutes."_

"Three minutes!" Reynolds repeated.

"Come on," Adel urged himself. "Come on. You're a killer. A warrior. A fucking Marine. You can do this."

He was vaguely aware of X shooting him a concerned look, but Adel ignored it as he continued to try and psych himself up.

 _"One minute."_

"One minute!" Reynolds bellowed. "Marines! On your feet! Get ready!"

Adel shakily undid his restraints and climbed to his feet. Pulling out his rucksack from underneath his seat, he slipped it onto his back and made sure to grab his rifle. He stood there behind Sam, doing his best to hide his trembling.

 _"Thirty seconds. Crew chief, lower the ramp."_

The crew chief reached out and hit a button on his console. With a whine of hydraulics that was quickly lost in the roar of the wind, the ramp slowly lowered, revealing the battlefield for the first time. Adel couldn't see much from where he was standing, but what he could see revealed the Pelican was maybe thirty to forty meters off the ground and descending fast. At the moment, they were flying over a large parking lot, with burning cars and trucks covering most of the surface and filling the air with smoke. From his vantage point, Adel could see all sorts of people running around on the ground between the cars, but he couldn't see whether they were Covenant or human. Then, what he could see was lost as they passed over a large stadium.

The Pelican stopped in mid-air with a jerk, nearly knocking Adel off his feet, before it descended straight down, the engines screaming at the sudden increase in power output. The Pelican touched the ground with a thump, but even before the aircraft had fully settled, Reynolds was already springing into action.

"MARINES! WE ARE GREEN AND VERY, _VERY_ MEAN!"

"OORAH!" Adel screamed at the top of his lungs at a last minute attempt to psych himself up.

"Follow me!" Reynolds bellowed one last time before disappearing down the ramp. At once, everyone else in the Pelican began surging forward to do the same.

Following closely behind Sam, Adel jogged down the ramp -

\- and descended into hell.

The first thing that hit him was the noise. A cacophony of sounds filled his ears: the roar of jet engines as more Pelicans descended down from the heavens, the screaming of Banshees as they did their best to stop the flow of UNSC reinforcements, the thumping of mortars and artillery, the sharp ripping noise of machine gun fire, and the crackling of fire as it consumed all it could reach. The noise was almost overwhelming, and it was nearly enough to drive Adel to tears.

The next thing to hit him was the smell. All sorts of odors, many of which Adel could barely recognize: the tangy aroma of blood, the acrid stench of smoke, the stinging musk of gunpowder and ozone, and finally a scent that, even as inexperienced as he was, Adel recognized as the sweet fragrance of death. The bouquet of pungency made his stomach churn, and Adel fought the urge to puke.

Finally Adel took in the sights. Shattered skyscrapers filled the horizon, many of which looked around ready to collapse. Smoke was rising from so many places, causing a dull gray haze to fall over the city. Multi-colored lights: neon-green from Covenant fuel rod cannons, icy-blue from Covenant plasma weapons, red-orange from UNSC tracer rounds, white-gray from UNSC SAM contrails, and blinding off-white from aircraft flares crisscrossed the air; the kaleidoscope of colors kind of reminded Adel of a rave. Aircraft and spacecraft of all kinds from both sides darted above and between buildings, fighting for dominance of the sky.

Closer to where Adel was standing, a downed VTOL aircraft laid burning in the stadium stands. At the base of the stands, an entire platoon of 81mm medium mortars had been set up, the mortarmen frantically firing their weapons into the city. Several meters away from the mortars, a triage center had been set up under a small tent. Doctors, some wearing civilian scrubs, others wearing military fatigues, were busy tending to dozens of wounded people. On the field less than fifteen meters in front of the Pelicans, a crowd of panicked civilians, many of them covered in ash and blood and carrying nothing but their children and the clothes on their back, were pushing towards the Pelicans with only a small line of airmen to hold them back.

As Adel stood there, trying to process everything, one of the airmen attempting to hold back the civilians happened to look up and see Adel simply standing there at the back of the Pelican.

"Soldier!" the man screamed. "Come on! Let's move it! I got to get these people out of here! Let's move it soldier!"

The use of the term "soldier" immediately caught Adel's attention.

"'Soldier?'" Adel repeated, incredulous. Instantly some of the swagger he had when he was back on the _Gallipoli_ returned to him. " _'Soldier?'_ Listen up asshole, I'm a fucking UNSC Marine, not some pussy-ass mutherfucker who got handed a rifle and a uniform one day and told to go play war. I'm a fucking god of war, a stone cold killer, and a goddamn Marine. _I had to earn the right to wear this!_ " he yelled, finishing up his speech by patting the UNSCMC emblem that was printed on his name patch that was plastered on the center of his chest.

The airman, however, didn't look impressed.

"Listen fuckface," he snarled. "No one gives a flying fuck who you are. These people have _got_ to get off this fucking planet, but you're holding everything up! _Get out of the fucking way!"_

"I don't take orders from the Chair Force!" Adel tried to retort, but before he could, Sam came running up.

"Are you fucking kidding me Adel!? Now's not the fucking time!" he bellowed. "Clear the ramp! Let's move Marine!"

Adel had no chance to protest as Sam yanked him off the ramp and away from the Pelican. Almost immediately, the airmen stepped aside and a mass of civilians began piling onto the Pelican. It took maybe all of five seconds before the crew chief was indicating the Pelican was full, and the airmen quickly stepped in to stop the flow of civilians.

Adel ducked his head as the ramp slid shut and the engines flared, launching the Pelican straight up into the air. The aircraft continued to climb until it was high enough to clear the stadium, before igniting its afterburners and speeding off in the direction of high orbit.

"Adel, let's go!" Sam urged as soon as the Pelican was out of sight. "We gotta go find Reynolds! Come on!"

Adel wanted to protest, but with Sam tugging on his sleeve, he wasn't given a chance. He half followed, half got dragged towards the interior of the stadium where the rest of the platoon was gathering.

"MARINE!"

"Ah shit," Sam muttered, and Adel whirled around only to see Lieutenant Silva marching towards them with an irate look on his face.

"Marine!" Silva repeated as he walked straight up to Adel and stopped right in front of him. "What was that?"

Adel's annoyance instantly turned to confusion.

"Sir?" was all he said instead.

"I saw you fighting with that airman," Silva yelled. "What the hell was that!?"

Adel stared at him, incredulous. Out of all the things he expected from Silva, that wasn't it. Fortunately, Sam quickly stepped in before Adel could reply.

"Sir, with all due respect," Sam calmly said, "I don't think this is the time and place for this."

Silva immediately whirled on him.

"No one cares what _you_ think Corporal," he hissed. "I will not have my Marines fighting personnel from our sister services. _I will not tolerate it!_ "

"LIEUTENANT!

Adel and the others turned around to see Reynolds jogging towards them.

"Sir, what the gorram hell is goin' on?" Reynolds demanded to know.

"Staff Sergeant, I want this Marine's name, rank, and service number," Silva snapped, pointing at Adel. "He was fighting with an airman, and I will not tolerate it!"

Reynolds stared at him like he was crazy.

"Sir, we got other problems," was all he said and before Silva could protest, he turned around and gestured at someone standing a couple of meters away. "Major Edison!"

A man wearing the uniform of the Air Force and golden oak leaves of a major came running up.

"Major, this 2nd Lieutenant Silva, 1st Platoon Commander," Reynolds recited, pointing at Silva. The Major turned to him.

"Major Edison, No 101 Network Operations Squadron, Actium Air Force!" the Major yelled as something exploded just outside the stadium. "Listen up Lieutenant, here's the situation: an unknown number of Covenant soldiers have managed to break through the MLR and are making their way here, right now! I got several hundred civilians waiting to be evacuated, but most of my troops got sent to go help hold the line, so I've got next to no one to help defend this place. I need you and your platoon to head to the southern entrance and hold the Covenant back until more reinforcements arrive!"

"Understood Major. We'll get it done," Silva smoothly replied, and Edison gave a single nod before running off.

As soon as Edison left though, Silva immediately turned to Reynolds.

"Staff Sergeant, bring the platoon to the southern entrance and set up defensive positions; prepare to defend this landing zone!"

"Sir, you ain't comin' with?" Reynolds asked, sounding surprised.

"With the executive officer having been shot down en-route, the company commander will need _me_ to coordinate the actions of all his platoons, at least until he touches down himself," Silva smugly replied.

Adel's eyes flickered towards Reynolds, only to see a surprised look appearing on his face.

"Sir, that's not exactly your job..." he started to say, but Silva quickly interrupted him.

"Staff Sergeant, was any part of my order unclear?"

Adel could see Reynolds frowning, but he nevertheless said, "No sir."

"Then see that it gets done Staff Sergeant," Silva snapped, before leaning in close, and saying in a low enough voice, Adel had to strain in order to hear him over all the background noises. "I'm in charge Staff Sergeant. Don't ever forget that."

And with an imperious look on his face, Silva spun around on one heel and walked away, leaving Reynolds looking flabbergasted.

"Húndàn(1)," Adel heard him mutter before, more loudly, he yelled, "Alright 3rd Platoon! On me!"

Adel hefted his rifle and followed Reynolds as he lead the platoon towards the concourse area of the stadium. They jogged through the concrete corridors, passing scores of civilians, all headed towards the arena for evacuation.

Finding a staircase that would take them up to the southern entrance, they headed up. The stairs were packed with even more civilians, but all of them quickly moved out of the way at the sight of nearly forty-five heavily armed Marines charging towards them.

"Jesus," Adel heard X call out. "Why the fuck are there still so many civilians around?"

"A city this big and this dense?" Sam called back. "I'd be surprised if the UNSC had even managed to evacuate half of the city's population before the landings started. But fuck, this is going to complicate things."

"Hey, as long as they don't get in our way, we should be fine," Adel growled as he shoved his way through a group of civilians who had wandered into his path.

Sam grunted in agreement.

Rushing up the last flight of stairs, they entered into the main level of the concourse. The area was a mess. What had once been a gateway to entertainment was now a war zone. Large windows that had once flooded the area with natural light had been shattered, the glass and metal frames littering the ground below and exposing the lobby to the freezing air and snow outside. Concession stands and kiosks that had once attracted sports fans with their merchandise had been ripped out from the ground and shoved in front of the windows and doorways, forming a makeshift barricade. Crouched behind the barricade located at the main entrance, were seven _very_ nervous looking airmen. Presumably they were supposed to be guarding the entrance, but all they were doing was hiding behind their wall, not even moving as dozens of civilians climbed over the sandbags and rushed further into the stadium.

One of the airmen happened to look up and spot them.

"Oh, thank god, it's the Marines!" he blurted out.

"At ease Airman," Reynolds ordered as he walked up. "Staff Sergeant Reynolds, UNSC Marine Corps. Who's in charge here?"

The same airman that originally spoke up raised his hand. "That'll be me sir."

Adel could see Reynolds raising an eyebrow. "I ain't an officer."

"Oh good," the airman blurted out. "Me neither. Uh, Senior Airman Tsui sir. I mean... Sergeant. I mean... I'm Senior Airman Tsui, Sergeant."

Reynolds reached out and put a comforting hand on Tsui's shoulder. "Relax son, help is here. Major Edison be sayin' Covies are on their way. What's the situation here?"

Tsui took a deep breath and seemed to calm down just a bit. "Surveillance says a company-sized unit of Covenant light infantry managed to break through the frontline and are making a beeline right here. They don't got no armor, but it doesn't matter cause I only got seven guys, and none of us are trained for combat."

"We're A-1(2) squadron headquarters support staff sir," Tsui explained at Reynolds' questioning look. "I deal with payroll. Last time I held a rifle was in basic."

"Got a bunch of gorram REMFs(3) here," Adel heard Reynolds mutter before, more loudly, he asked, "What 'bout civilians? Seein' loads of 'em right now. We got anymore comin' in?"

"I think this is the last of them sir," Tsui reported. "Crowd's been quickly thinning out, and anyone between us and the Covenant, well, Covies would rather shoot 'em than let them get away."

Reynolds sadly shook his head. "Ain't that the sad truth. How many entrances we got on this side?"

"Four sir. This is the main one, but we've one down on the left, one on the right, and a small one downstairs. I think it's a service entrance."

"Alright. 1st Squad! Head downstairs, cover our asses. 2nd and 3rd, left and right entrances, cover our flanks. Platoon HQ will set up here!" To Tsui, Reynolds barked, "Y'all airmen with us."

"Yes Sergeant."

Reynolds turned around. "Marines! Set up defensive positions!"

Adel immediately and eagerly leapt forward, determined to get to the barrier first in order to secure the best position possible. Finding a potential spot, he began scanning the battlefield in front of him.

The stadium as a whole sat on top of a very small and gradual hill, putting it at about two meters above the surrounding area. Surrounding the entire stadium was the parking lot, which itself was maybe two hundred and thirty to two hundred and fifty meters wide. Dotting the parking lot were a large number of cars which could potentially provide a lot of cover for the attacking Covenant, but Adel wasn't worried: the 9.5mm round his battle rifle fired was more than capable of penetrating the light-skinned civilian vehicles.

At the other end of the parking lot, there was a large, four lane road that separated the stadium and its parking lot from the rest of the city. On the other side of that road were some small, one story brick buildings that appeared to be restaurants of sorts. Beyond that, Adel couldn't see much more.

Deciding he had sufficient fields of fire from where he was, Adel started to get settled in. He began pulling out the rockets from his rucksack and setting them up; as the team's assistant gunner, Adel was carrying four rockets for X's M41 "SPNKR" rocket launcher: two HEDP rounds for usage against bunkers, and two HEAT rounds for use against Covenant armor.

"What are you going to want X: HEDP or HEAT?" Adel asked.

Sam quickly stopped him before he could remove the rockets from their protective cases. "Hold up on the rockets Adel," he ordered. "Flyboy over there said incoming Covies don't have any armor, so let's save them until we really need them."

Adel nodded and then grinned. If they weren't firing the Jackhammer, then that meant Adel didn't have to worry about reloading it, and could focus on firing his rifle, thus increasing his chances of a kill. This really _was_ turning out to be the best day ever.

Sliding the rockets back into their cases on his rucksack, Adel instead began removing the covers off all his magazine pouches for faster access to reloads. Beside him, he could hear Sam and X following suit. Then someone else took a knee next to them. Adel looked up. It was that airman, Tsui.

"You guys mind if I take up position next to you?" Tsui asked with a rather pathetic begging look on his face.

"Fuck yes we mind," Adel immediately snapped. "We don't need some slack-jawed faggot sitting next to us."

"Adel, shut the fuck up," Sam snapped. "Ignore him Airman, he's an asshole. Yeah, you can set up next to us. One condition though: I've seen how you Zoomies fight. Try to remember, when the shooting starts, make sure you're shooting in the same direction as everybody else."

Tsui gave a sheepish grin as he lifted his assault rifle in response, and Adel growled as he noticed Tsui's finger was on the trigger. Tsui at least had the good sense to have the safety on and keep his rifle pointed down range, but the sight didn't exactly fill Adel with confidence over the Airman's fighting ability. With any luck, Tsui would get himself killed pretty quickly, and Adel wouldn't have to worry about accidently getting shot in the back by friendlies.

Without warning, there was a purple flash of light and Tsui's head practically exploded. Adel snapped his head in Tsui's direction in time to see his body sagging to the ground like a puppet whose strings had just been cut.

 _ **FWOOZ!**_

"Sniper!" Sam screamed, shoving Adel to the ground as the retort from the beam rifle shot echoed across the battlefield. "TAKE COVER!"

"Contact!" X screamed. "Enemy sniper, one story building, other side of the parking lot!"

"SUPPRESSING FIRE!"

Adel had no idea who shouted out that last order, but it didn't seem to matter as all military personnel present promptly opened up. Adel hastily grabbed his rifle, not wanting to miss out on all the action, and leveled it. He didn't know which building the sniper had been in, so he chose one at random and pulled the trigger.

 _BANG BANG BANG!_

Adel felt a feral grin cross over his face as he felt the familiar feeling of his battle rifle recoiling into his shoulder and for the first time since he enlisted, he actually felt like he was in a war. The noise, the chaos? This was what he'd been training for. This is what he _lived_ for.

"Whoa, whoa! Slow down your rate of fire!" he heard Reynolds yelling in the background. "Lance Corporal! Which building you see the sniper shootin' from?"

"The noodles place Staff Sergeant!"

Adel peaked through his two times scope and scanned the row of buildings, and noticed one of them had a half-broken sign that at one point, appeared to have been a graphic of a large white bowl containing either spaghetti or lo mein. He shifted his aim towards the building and was about to pull the trigger, when Reynolds shouted,

"Marines! Cease fire!"

Adel heard someone running and he glanced around to see Reynolds running up the machine gun team.

"MG team, suppress that building!" he ordered, pointing at the noodles place. "Sergeant Badger! Drop a couple of mortars onto that roof!"

"Roger that Staff Sergeant!"

Adel watched as Badger unsling the mortar tube from his back and planted it on the ground while the machine gun team began spraying down the building. Dropping a mortar round down the barrel, Adel watched as Badger adjusted the angle of the mortar before putting his hand on the trigger.

"FIRING!" Badger yelled, and pulled the trigger.

 _THUNK!_

The 60mm mortar left the tube and Badger quickly adjusted his aim, tossed another mortar down the barrel, and pulled the trigger again.

 _THUNK!_

With the machine gun team suppressing the building, Adel waited with bated breath for the mortars to hit.

 _SWOOOSHHHH!_

 _BABOOMKABOOM!_

The mortars landed on the roof and exploded in rapid succession. There was a loud roar as the roof of the building partially collapsed, hopefully killing the sniper along with it. At that sight, Adel couldn't help but cheer.

"Yeah! Get some Badger!" he yelled.

"raaaaaaaaaaAAAAA _AHHHHHH_ **HHHHHHH** _ **HHHHHH!"**_

Adel's head snapped in shock as a _ton_ of Covenant infantry suddenly began pouring from the building they had just hit. Hollering and screaming at the top of their lungs, the Covenant quickly crossed the street and started charging straight towards the stadium, firing their weapons as they ran.

 _FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ!_

Adel dove for the deck as plasma bolts began showering the area around the entrance, hitting the walls, the floor, the roof, the barrier, everywhere. The smell of ozone quickly overpowered all other scents and temperatures in the general vicinity skyrocketed as the plasma left scorch marks in the concrete.

This time, there were no need for orders: the Marines immediately began firing back.

"CONTACT!" someone screamed.

"No shit!" Adel yelled back as he brought his rifle up to his shoulder and pulled the trigger, only to find he had emptied the mag in the firefight against the sniper and hadn't thought to reload.

Swearing violently under his breath, Adel ripped out the empty magazine and let it drop to the ground, pulling out a new one as it did. He was about to ram it home into his rifle when –

 _ **KABOOM!**_

The entire building shook as something heavy hit it, and out of surprise, Adel reflexively tossed his magazine into the air as he hefted his rifle and started looking around for whatever it was. For his troubles, he nearly took a plasma bolt to the face, the bolt impacting the doorframe just above his head and sending sparks in all directions, as well as causing Adel to reflexively dive for the floor.

"What the fuck was that?" Adel yelled at Sam.

"Dunno, don't care! Fire your weapon Marine!" Sam screamed back at him.

"Shit!"

Scrambling around on the floor, Adel casted around, looking for his magazine. Finding it sitting in a rapidly growing pile of brass, he quickly reloaded, and then casted around the battlefield, looking for a target. He spotted one Grunt emerging from cover around a small red car and start to charge forward while two of his buddies started laying down suppressing fire.

Dropping the crosshairs of his scope over the charging Grunt, Adel slowly released his breath and pulled the trigger.

 _click._

"Son of a _bitch!"_ Adel screamed as he slapped the bottom of his magazine a couple of times and racked the bolt. He quickly lowered his rifle again and tried again, but again his rifle let out a mute _click_ as the Grunt slid to safety behind a small white pickup truck. "Malfunction!"

Adel gave his magazine another hard smack and racked the bolt again as one of the Grunt's buddies emerged from behind the red car. He took aim at the new Grunt and pulled the trigger, but again his rifle failed to fire. "Fuck fuck fuck!"

He racked the bolt several times to try and clear whatever was causing his rifle to jam, and pulled the trigger, and then cycled the bolt a couple more times when that absolutely failed to accomplish anything.

"What the fuck is wrong with you Adel!" Sam screamed at him from his spot behind the barricade.

"I'm jammed!" Adel yelled back as he racked the bolt once more and pulled the trigger with no luck.

"Shit! X, pick up your rate of fire!"

"Come on baby, don't do this shit to me; not now!" Adel pleaded as he began looking his rifle over, trying to figure out what was wrong, when he noticed his ammo counter was still showing his magazine had a full thirty-six rounds left, which was weird because he should have at least ejected a couple by now.

Pulling back on the bolt just a bit, Adel peered into the chamber of his rifle, only to see nothing was getting loaded. "What the _fuck!"_

Ripping the magazine out, Adel was astonished to see the magazine feed lips were bent, probably the result of him dropping it. Because his ammo counter only tallied the number of bullets in his magazine and not the chamber, he hadn't realized anything was wrong.

"Shit!" Adel yelled, hurtling the busted magazine to the ground and ripping out a new one. This time making sure a round got chambered, Adel switched his rifle to full auto and pulled the trigger.

 _BANGBANGBANGBANG!_

"YES! Finally!" Adel cheered as he emptied the entire thirty-six round magazine without issue. Hastily reloading, Adel rose back up to search for a target. He spotted one Jackal welding a carbine, rising up from behind the engine block of a nice looking sports car to fire at targets unseen.

Slowly exhaling, Adel pulled the trigger, only to see a bullet hole forming in the hood of the car just below the Jackal. Biting back a string of curses, Adel adjusted his aim a bit higher and fired another few shots, but having been alerted by the first one, the Jackal ducked, and all Adel's rounds accomplished was shattering the window.

"Come on!" Adel urged as he emptied the rest of his magazine in the Jackal's direction, trying to bag his first kill, but the Jackal steadfastly remained in cover. "This ain't fair! I should have gotten you with that first shot!"

He hastily moved to reload but just as he did, the Jackal suddenly emerged from cover with his carbine pointed right at Adel. In the middle of swapping magazines, there was nothing Adel could do except awkwardly stand there as the Jackal drew a bead on him.

 _BANG!_

The Jackal jerked as a bullet slammed into his chest.

 _BANGBANG!_

Another two bullets slammed into him and the Jackal toppled over backwards, blood gushing from the bullet holes in his chest.

Adel let out a mute sigh of relief, but then the anger hit him. Who the fuck stole his kill?

He glanced around, only to see X firing his rifle in the same general vicinity the Jackal had been.

"'X, what the fuck!" Adel yelled.

X paused in his shooting. "What?"

"You stole my fucking kill asshole!"

X stared at him. "Who the fuck cares!?" he yelled back and started shooting again.

" _ **I**_ care," Adel muttered before turning back to find another target. But before he could -

 _ **FWOOZ!**_

"Shit!" Adel yelped as a plasma bolt flew past his face, missing it by mere millimeters. He dove for the ground as more bolts began impacting the area around him.

"Plasma cannon!" Sam yelled in warning. "Red brick house, third story, second window on the right! Adel, suppress!"

Adel peeked around the barricade. Following the bolts back, he could see where the fire was coming from, though he couldn't see the actual plasma cannon itself or the gunner, probably because they'd been set up at the back of the room. Nevertheless, Adel leveled his rifle and started shooting back.

He could see bullets impacting the wall all around the window, sends puffs of dust into the air as they punched right through the brick and masonry, leaving massive holes in its wake. The incoming fire from the plasma cannon stopped and just as Adel was about to assume the gunner had been taken out and turn away, it abruptly started up again.

"God dammit!" Adel yelled as plasma raked his position again. None of the fire was specifically being aimed at him, but rather, the Covenant gunner was merely hosing down the entire line. But between the cannon and the small arms fire, the Marines were close to becoming pinned down. That cannon had to be taken out.

Adel stood up, trying to get a better angle on the window. All he needed to do was identify where the muzzle flash was, then aim just a few centimeters above it so he could take out the gunner and -

 _ **POW!**_

It was like someone had just punched Adel in the chest. The impact caused Adel to take a couple of steps backwards before he lost his balance and he toppled over, landing on his back. He felt slightly winded, like he'd just finished morning PT, and he laid there for a moment, trying to catch his breath.

"Adel! You alright?" Sam yelled as he dropped to his knees next to Adel.

"I think so?" Adel stammered. "What the hell was that?"

"You got hit by a plasma bolt!"

"Did I?" Adel dumbly asked, feeling numb. That is, until he smelled something burning.

Lifting his head up, Adel was startled to see a massive smoke hole in the center of his chest plate where the plasma bolt had hit him. He could see smoke rising from where it was still melting its way through the armor, and then that was when the panic hit him.

"Corpsman!" Adel screamed as he tried to check the damage, but his chest plate was still a bit too hot for him to touch. He started to feel a tingling sensation on his chest, which started to freak him out even more. "I'm hit! Corpsman!"

The platoon's assigned corpsman, Private First Class Compton(4), instantly appeared by his side.

"Move your hands! Let me look at it!" Compton demanded and Adel quickly complied. He winced as he felt Compton gently remove his half-melted chest plate and began checking the flesh underneath.

"How bad is it Doc?" Adel anxiously asked.

Compton glanced in his direction with a look on his face that clearly said he thought Adel was being an idiot.

"Dude. You're perfectly fine," he reported in a rather exasperated voice.

"What?"

"You aren't wounded in the least bit," Compton repeated. "Plasma just melted your armor. It didn't burn your chest at all. In fact, it didn't even burn through your uniform."

Adel tilted his head forward to look at his own chest. Sure enough, while his chest plate now had a hole through it and his jacket was slightly blackened due to the heat, Adel was perfectly fine.

"Why does my chest feel numb then?" Adel asked, trying to do his best to hide his growing embarrassment, but failing.

"Because it's sub-zero temperatures out here and without the extra layering your armor provides, you're finally feeling the cold?" Compton suggested. "Whatever the case is, you haven't been wounded, so stop being a whiny bitch, get up, and get back into the fight!"

Without another word, Compton took off, leaving Adel's face burning from embarrassment. He had honestly thought he'd been injured, and the fact that he hadn't left him feeling both relieved and absolutely modified at how badly he had freaked out.

"Adel! GET UP MARINE!"

Adel jumped. He seized his rifle and threw himself behind the barricade next to Sam.

"We gotta to take out that fucking cannon!" Sam snapped as he reloaded his rifle. "X! Hit that motherfucker with the Jackhammer!"

"Roger that!" X yelled back. "Adel, give me an HEDP!"

"On it!"

Adel hastily tossed his rucksack to the ground and ripped out an HEDP rocket as X planted the launcher onto his shoulder. Popping the protective cap off, Adel slide the rocket into place and patted X on the back of the helmet to indicate the Jackhammer was loaded.

"Backblast area all cleared?" X asked as Adel took up position right next to him.

"Backblast area all secured!"

"ROCKET!" X screamed at the top of his lungs before standing up and pulling the trigger.

 _ **WHOOMP!**_

The 102mm rocket launched from the end of the M41 Jackhammer at nearly three hundred meters per second, the concussion from the launch hitting Adel like a slap to the face. Even with his hearing protection, the launch left Adel's ears ringing; at nearly one hundred and ninety decibels, the Jackhammer was one of the loudest weapons on the battlefield.

Still, despite all this, firing the Jackhammer never ceased to provide Adel great joy and he quickly turned around just in time to see the room the plasma cannon was positioned in exploding outwards in a giant cloud of dust.

"Target destroyed!" X hollered.

"FUCK YEAH!" Adel cheered. "Take that you sorry sons of bitches!"

 _ **SWHOOOOSHHHH! SWHOOOOSHHHH!**_

"INCOMING!" Reynolds screamed as two bright red plasma mortars rose up from somewhere behind the building the plasma cannon had been and started streaking towards the stadium. Adel grabbed his rifle and hit the deck, but instead of impacting around or even near his position, the mortars actually flew passed and to Adel's horror, landed somewhere inside the stadium itself.

"They shootin' at the LZ!" Reynolds yelled with realization. "Tryin' to take out our Pelicans on the ground. Anyone got eyes on?"

"It's coming from behind those buildings!" Sam reported. "I think I got line of sight Staff Sergeant!"

Reynolds quickly moved over to where Sam was.

"That's close enough!" Reynolds reported. "Bendis! Bring up the target locator!"

The forward observer, Sergeant Bendis stood up with a pistol-like device in his hands. He pointed it in the direction the mortars were coming from, but was forced to duck as a plasma bolt splattered near his position.

"Fuck!" he yelped. "Staff Sergeant! I need about three to five seconds for a lock!"

"Got it! Alright Marines, standby to provide suppressin' fire for Bendis! On my mark!"

Adel hastily swapped his magazine for a fresh one and leveled his rifle.

"Suppressin' -"

"STAFF SERGEANT REYNOLDS!"

Out of reflex, Adel turned around, even though it wasn't his name being called, just to see who was shouting. To his annoyance, it was Silva.

"Staff Sergeant! What the hell are you doing? They're starting to take fire inside the stadium!" Silva yelled.

"I know sir, we're workin' on it!" Reynolds replied but Silva didn't appear to be having any of it.

"No!" he snapped. "We need to attack, now! Marines! Get up! Attack, attack! Let's move it!"

He began moving from Marine to Marine, all the while yelling, "On your feet! Move it out, NOW!"

"Lieutenant, GET DOWN!" Reynolds screamed, grabbing Silva and yanking him to the ground. As he did, a barrage of plasma bolts cut through the space Silva had just been occupying moments ago, missing him by mere millimeters, much to Adel's disappointment.

"Lieutenant, keep you head down," Reynolds ordered. "No need for us to attack, we got air support! Bendis, get ready to laze the target. Marines, SUPPRESSIN' FIRE!"

Whatever protests Silva may have had was immediately drowned out by the sounds of automatic weapons fire as everyone promptly opened up. Grinning to himself, Adel lifted his rifle. With the battlefield now being covered with burning vehicles and smoke, it made it rather difficult to see things so he just started firing in front of him at random. Beside him, he could hear Bendis yelling into his radio,

"Blackjack, this is Warhammer 1, I'm marking a target for you with the locator. Target is a Covenant light mortar battery, in the open!"

As Bendis spoke, Adel could see a holographic red circle suddenly appearing in his HUD roughly where the mortars were firing from. Adel couldn't hear what the pilot's response was, but he quickly heard the roar of a jet fighter as it flew by overhead and, moments later, three cylindrical objects broke through the cloud cover.

"INCOMING!"

The bombs speed to the ground with a loud _SWOOSH_ noise before all sounds promptly disappeared as the bombs exploded. Adel could see the shockwave from the explosions ripple across the parking lot while plumes of smoke were sent billowing into the sky. At that sight, the remaining Covenant infantry immediately began retreating.

"See Lieutenant?" Adel heard Reynolds say as his hearing protection unsealed. "We let the air wingers do the 'eavy liftin', then we can move out. MARINES! ADVANCE!"

"LET'S GO GET THE BASTARDS!" Adel screamed at the top of his lungs. "RAHHHH!"

Almost as one, the entire squad of Marines vaulted over the barricade, firing their weapons and screaming battle cries at the top of their lungs. Charging forward, they surged down the hill in pursuit of the retreating Covenant.

"Pour it on them boys!" Reynolds yelled in encouragement from somewhere in the background.

"Hey! Adel, X! Move cover to cover!" Sam yelled from somewhere beside Adel. "And maintain your spacing!"

Attempting to maintain a rough line formation with the rest of his squadmates, Adel casted around for a target. He spotted a retreating Grunt at the other end of the parking lot, the alien's bright orange armor causing him to stand out amongst all the burning cars, and Adel quickly brought his rifle to bear. He started to pull the trigger but at that exact second, the strap to his rucksack, which he had hastily thrown back onto his back before dashing forward, slipped off his shoulder and caused his arm to jerk down, causing him to fire his rifle into the ground.

Snarling in annoyance, Adel readjusted his aim, but by that time, the Grunt was gone, though whether it was because the Grunt had successfully managed to retreat or because someone else had shot him, Adel didn't know. He looked around for another target, however there was none to be found: it was clear, even to Adel, the firefight had ended the moment the bombs had hit.

Lowering his rifle in disappointment, Adel relaxed as everyone else around him began to stand down.

There was a loud _hiss_ from behind Adel, causing him to jump and whirl around, but it was only Reynolds ignited a smoke grenade. Holding it until it started spewing out green smoke, he tossed it to the ground a few meters away.

"Warrior, this Warhammer 1 Actual, sitrep as follows: LZ Yankee secured," Adel heard Silva saying into the radio as he walked up. "Marking LZ with green smoke, I say again, green smoke. Send in the vics, over."

"Hey!" Reynolds yelled, catching Adel's attention. "Spread out y'all, we got dropships inbound! Team leaders, set up a perimeter!"

"Roger that Staff Sergeant!" Sam called out. "Come on guys, let's find some cover."

Adel followed Sam as he led them to a spot behind one of the few intact cars left in the parking lot a few meters away.

"X, reload the Jackhammer," Sam ordered as they all dropped to one knee. "Adel, cover him."

Adel nodded. Quickly reloading, he brought his rifle into a low ready position and began scanning the direction the Covenant had retreated to, just in case they decided to come back as X reloaded his rocket launcher. The sound of heavy jet engines started to fill the air and Adel glanced skyward.

Descending from the sky were a large amount of Albatross dropships, with the occasional Pelican mixed in. All the dropships began headed towards the green smoke and as they got closer to the ground, Adel could see they were all carrying vehicles, mainly Warthogs, though the Pelicans were carrying Scorpion tanks.

Swooping down, the dropships began depositing all the vehicles onto the parking lot, following by the vehicle crews. As soon as their vehicles were safely on the ground, the dropships all took off again and headed in the direction of the stadium itself, presumably to go pick up more civilians.

"PLATOON!" Reynolds yelled. "MOUNT UP! "

"It's time we took the fight to the Covies."

* * *

1\. Húndàn: this is Mandarin Chinese and is actually from one of the _Firefly_ episodes (Episode 3: _Bushwhacked_.) Literally translated into English it means "stupid egg" but with context, it could be translated into "asshole" or "bastard."

2\. A-1: the "A" is simply Air Force staff positions, similar to the "S" positions in usage by the Army and the Marine Corps. Similar to those services, the Air Force A-1 staff position in a military headquarters is responsible for managing the training and services provided to the airmen under their command. Think of them as the military version of the civilian HR department.

3\. REMF: I might have explained what this was at some point, but just in case, this is an acronym that stands for **R** ear- **E** chelon **M** other **f** ucker

4\. I realize in the modern United States Marine Corps, all medical services are provided by the United States Navy, with all hospital corpsmen being Sailors as opposed to Marines. That means, if Compton had been in the USMC, he would have actually been a Hospitalman Apprentice, not a Private First Class. I spent a long time thinking about whether I wanted to replicate that system in this story, but given that the UNSCMC is in fact, its own separate and independent military branch of the UNSC (unlike the USMC, which is technically a component of the Department of the Navy,) I decided they should have their own medical branch like all the other military services do (out of tradition though, they'd be called corpsmen, as opposed to combat medics.) In my head, Navy corpsmen could still serve with the Marines, it just wouldn't be as common as it is nowadays (they would act as individual augmentees.)

In summary: the UNSCMC has their own corpsmen

General Notes:

I'm not sure if it's clear just yet, but Adel and all the other Marines are armed with BR55 battle rifles. I don't think it's ever been outright said, but I personally feel that is been heavily hinted that the UNSC Marine Corps had been in the process of replacing their MA5C assault rifles with BR55s just prior to the Covenant invasion. I feel like this is the case because in the Halo novel, _Halo: Contact Harvest_ , which takes place in the year 2525 (the first year of the war,) Sergeant Johnson and his men are all using a prototype battle rifle variant, the XBR55. Furthermore, enough of these prototype weapons had been constructed that year for the Insurgent group, the United Rebel Front, to have stolen enough of them to have fully equipped one of their fractions, as shown in the Halo graphic novel, _Halo: Collateral Damage_ , Issue 1. Not only that, as shown in _Halo 2_ , every single Marine on Earth is equipped with a BR, with the assault rifle not making a single appearance.

With all that being said, I think in my headcanon, the history of the battle rifle would have gone something like this:

In early 2500, with usage of heavy body armor becoming more and more common among Innie forces, the Marine Corps decided they needed to fundamentally rethink the way small arms worked to defeat this new threat. Because by the late 2400's, the standard UNSC cartridge, the 7.62x51mm M118 round, had reached its upgradable limit, the Marine Corps decided an entirely new round was needed: the 9.5x40mm M634 Experimental High Powered Semi-Amor Piercing. Utilizing an entirely new propellant, as well as a fundamentally redesigned bullet design, the M634 X-HP-SAP round would not only possess better armor penetrating characteristics as compared to its predecessor, it would also have further range and better accuracy, all the while better retaining its initial velocity.

Unfortunately, a simple conversion of the standard MA5C proved to be impossible without the rifle undergoing a massive redesign not only because of the M634's larger cartridge size, but also because the MA5C rifle was simply unable to take advantage of the new performance characteristics as offered by the M634. As a result, a new rifle was designed, the XBR55. First undergoing limited field testing in 2522, the rifle received high praise high praise not only for its stopping power, but also for its reliability and accuracy. As a result, the rifle was formally adopted by the UNSCMC as the "Battle Rifle, Model 55," in 2525.

Despite Marine Corps Command's stated goal of having the entirety of the Marine Corps converted over to the new rifle by 2535 (with all existing stocks of MA5B and C rifles being turned over to the Navy, and Marine Corps Reserves,) the Covenant invasion coincidently began the same year as the rifle was adopted. With two wars raging, it became increasingly clear to UNSC High Command just how expensive and disruptive switching the Corps over to a new service rifle would be, not just the cost in converting MA5 factories into BR55 factories, but also the training and new logistical requirements. As a result, the decision to halt further procurement of the new rifle was made in 2528. All current BR factories would continue to exist in order to support the few units that had already converted to the new rifle, but eventually, they too would convert back to the MA5C. By 2545, the only conventional units to have the BR55 would be the entirety of Earth's military garrison, as well as those Marines stationed on New Jerusalem and Harmony. By the war's end, only Earth's military garrison would have the BR as their standard service rifle.


	24. Chapter 24

Broman

Thanks for the review as always Broman! I don't think I've said it enough, but I really do appreciate you taking the time for not only stopping by to read my story, but also to leave a review! So, hats off to you!

A couple of responses:

\- The MG team came from the company's weapon's platoon, same with the assault team and the mortar team. Basically, I'm treating the UNSCMC infantry company organization like that of the USMC in the sense that every Marine rifle company is made up of four platoons: three rifle platoons and a weapon's platoon. In the weapon's platoon, there are three sections: a machine gun section, a 60mm mortar section, and an assault section. My understanding is that while the platoon with sometimes fight together, other times the individual teams will be partitioned out to each one of the three rifle platoons for added support.

So, in this case, 3rd Platoon received one mortar team (Sgt Badger,) one assault team (Adel,) and one machine gun team (unnamed as of yet.)

(Technically speaking, there should be _two_ assault and MG teams, not one, but I didn't include them as this was complicated enough as it is.)

\- I actually already do have a panzerfaust-like weapon in my story, the M76 SRAAW (which appeared in chapter 6 of _MIA,_ as well as chapter 15 of this one.) Similar in the sense that it's a one shot, recoilless anti-tank weapon, I based its appearance off that of the real-world Panzerfaust 3 (which in turn is arguable the modern incarnation of the Panzerfaust 60, the most common panzerfaust variant of WW2.)

As for last-ditch weapons, I'll be honest, I don't really see the UNSC ever running out of small arms to ever need last ditch weapons in the same vein Nazi German did during WW2 for the simple fact that, in my opinion, they would already have had a massive stockpile stored before the war even began. I think there's something to keep in mind, the UNSC had essentially been fighting a civil war long before the Covenant ever appeared (the Insurrection began in 2494, a full thirty-one years before the fall of Harvest,) and the war was apparently turning out so poorly for the UNSC, it inspired Dr. Halsey to create the Spartan program in the first place. With that in mind, I would imagine that would already mean there were plenty of small arms in circulation.

Then, I think one needs to wonder what sort of gun laws the UEG had. If they were as liberal as, say, the gun laws in the United States (which, IMO, I can totally see a lot of colonies being like that, especially in the outer colonies,) then there's another stockpile of weapons to draw from (for example, it's estimated that as of 2018, there are anywhere between 5 to 15 million "assault rifle" weapons in the United States, the vast majority of which are probably AR-15 style rifles.) (For reference, between active and reserves, the US Armed Forces currently consist of a little over two million personnel.)

Anyway, thanks once again for the review!

* * *

 **Chapter 24**

 **Byzas, Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
1421**

 **Adel**

The sound of artillery whistling overhead accompanied Adel and his platoon as they made their way further into the city. The reverberation of those shells exploding in the distance, accompanied by the crackling of machine gun fire, echoed down the streets, but given that none of that was directed his way, Adel paid it little to no heed. Instead, he stood in the back of the M831 troop transport Warthog, excitedly staring at the city as they drove by. He had never been inside a city that was under siege, so he was taking the opportunity to see what it was like.

Surprisingly, it was a lot like being inside any regular old city. Parking was a nightmare: every conceivable spot, every parking lot, every garage, and even some spots on the sidewalk were occupied by vehicles, as usual. Traffic was backed up and it seemed to take ten minutes just to travel half a block, with the situation not being helped by the fact there seemed to be construction every other intersection. And then of course, there were all the pedestrians wandering around aimlessly on the sidewalks, and naturally, every now and then, one of those pedestrians would abruptly decide to jaywalk across the street, forcing Adel's driver to hurriedly jam down on his brakes.

Of course, looking _past_ the surface similarities, one could start to see the subtle differences between this city and a normal city going about its regular business. For one thing, all the vehicles sitting in all the parking spots? Roughly a third of them were military vehicles, with the rest being civilian vehicles, some of which had clearly been abandoned in a hurry as their engines had been left running and their doors hanging wide open. The traffic jams, which would normally be a result of all the traffic lights, were now because some of the roads were choked full of debris, the result of parts of buildings having been blown off by artillery and airstrikes. And the amount of jammed roads only increased the closer the Marines got to the frontline.

Furthermore, all the construction Adel was seeing? Military engineering units hard at work building bunkers, artillery and machine gun pits, trenches, and fortifying select buildings. As a result, of the few pedestrians that dared risk walking around in the open, all were wearing some sort of military uniform, whether it be Air Force, Navy, or Army. There were no Marine Corps uniforms though, outside of the convoy Adel was traveling in, which he noted with a bit of perverse pleasure as it proved for a fact that Adel and his battalion were the first Marine units to touch down inside the city.

All in all, it was quite an impressive display of military might, one that gave Adel a surge of patriotic pride. With all this effort and firepower, plus all the Marines that were _finally_ being unleashed, there was no way Adel could see the UNSC losing this city.

Without warning, the convoy abruptly came to a stop, and Adel quickly looked towards the front to find out why. With his Warthog located in the middle of the convoy of Warthogs, which in turn were trailing behind four Scorpion tanks, Adel didn't have the best view, but fortunately his rifle had a scope. Bring it up, he looked up in time to see Lieutenant Silva climbing out of a Warthog and moving to the front of the convoy. As soon as he was in position, the convoy started up again, only with Silva leading the way like he was leading some damn parade session, not a military convoy geared for war.

"What the fuck," Adel muttered. "Hey Sam! Get a load of General Miles!"

Sam quickly stood up and glanced in the direction Adel was pointing.

"What a fucking arrogant douchebag," Sam growled as he lowered his rifle.

"I know, right? Hey, what do you think the chances are some sniper will shoot him and solve the problem for us?"

"Not very high, given how our luck has been so far," Sam replied. "Seriously though: what the hell is that idiot thinking!?"

X shrugged. "Well, as Leo Tolstoy once said, 'When a person inflates his own importance, he does not see his own sins.(1)'"

Adel and Sam stared at him.

"Damn X," Sam commented. "Kinda laying this whole 'warrior poet' thing a little thick, aren't you?"

"You can't deny your true nature Corporal," X mysteriously commented as he went back to loading magazines.

Adel and Sam exchanged a look.

"Where did we find this guy!?" Adel exclaimed.

All X did was smile.

The convoy suddenly stopped again, and Adel started to look forward to see if Silva had finally come to his senses, but instead, a navpoint abruptly appeared on his HUD, pointing at a spot just around the next block.

" _3rd Platoon, rally on the navpoint,"_ he heard Reynolds ordering over the radio.

"Alright guys, you heard the Staff Sergeant!" Sam called out. "Let's go!"

Grabbing his rucksack, Adel eagerly ducked under the bars of the roll cage and hopped to the ground as opposed to waiting for his turn to exit from the rear. Tapping his foot on the ground, he waited a bit impatiently for Sam and X to join him, before they headed towards the navpoint. Jogging down the street, they round the corner and –

"Whoa," was all Adel could say.

The scene in front of him look almost like a set piece from the holovids. Covenant bodies, shrapnel and debris, impact craters, and destroyed vehicles covered the street. At the end of the block stood a building that appeared to have been a hotel at some point, only it had been hit with so much artillery and ordnance, it looked like one giant honeycombed riddled beehive. At this point, Adel was kind of surprised it was still standing, as it looked one hard sneeze away from collapsing.

Emerging from the building were a small number of shell-shocked people. Presumably they were Army, but it was a little hard for Adel to tell as they were covered in so much dust and grime, they were actually making Adel feel rather subconscious about how cleaned he looked at the moment. And he'd already been scuffed up through a firefight of his own.

Despite their appearance though, the soldiers were slowly picking their way through the street, stopping by each one of the Covenant's bodies, presumably to make sure the aliens were really dead.

"1st Squad!" someone yelled out, causing Adel to jump, and he looked up to see Reynolds making his way back down the street towards them. "Cover the south! 3rd Squad, cover the western approach! 2nd Squad, you got the east! Platoon HQ, help the Army boys secure the area! Secure all enemy weapons and check for intel! And spread it out y'all!"

"Oorah Staff Sergeant," Sam confirmed and gestured for Adel and X to follow him.

They started to make their way towards the Army soldiers.

"Hey, guys, start collecting these weapons," Sam ordered as he crouched by a Covenant Grunt that was missing it's head. Reaching out, he carefully extracted a plasma pistol from underneath the dead creature's body. The plasma pistol had been destroyed by a bullet to the upper receiver, but nonetheless, Sam lifted it up to show his team. "Doesn't matter if they're broke or not, we'll stack 'em in a pile, make it easier for the engies to demo."

"If we got them, shouldn't we be using them?" X asked.

Sam snorted. "Yeah, if you want to get shot in the back by our own guys," he replied. "These things are so distinctive, anyone on our side sees the weapon, they'll start shooting before checking to see who's actually holding onto the damn thing. Plus," he jerked his head in the direction of Silva. "I think Mr. Stick-in-the-ass over there would probably throw us in the brig for violating some NAVCOM general order or some other bullshit like that."

"True," X admitted.

The two of them continued to pick through the Covenant bodies, but Adel was no longer paying attention. At this point, the Soldiers had gotten close enough for Adel to actually take notice, and one soldier in particular had managed to catch his eye.

She was a Hispanic looking chick, though Adel could definitely make out some Oriental features, which made Adel wonder if she was of mixed heritage, however she was covered in the same amount of soot and grit as everyone else, making it hard for him to tell for certain. Though, truth be told, he wasn't exactly staring at her _face…_

Without another word, Adel reached behind him and started frantically patting the first shoulder he touched.

"What?" Sam demanded without looking up.

"Corporal, are you seeing what I'm seeing?" Adel asked and out of the corner of his eye, he could see Sam looking up. Adel quickly pointed.

He knew the moment Sam had seen what Adel was pointing at because he suddenly said, "Whoa."

"What are we looking at?" Adel heard X ask as he walked up, then stop short. "Ah. I see. Well… _damn."_

The three of them stood there, unashamedly staring at the lady's ass. Adel would be the first to admit it, he wasn't much in the way of words, not like X was. It never bothered him much in the past as Adel was always one to prefer to talk with his fist, but at the moment, he couldn't help but curse his inability to fluidly describe the sight that laid in front of him. The best he could do was say it was like someone had stuffed a couple of watermelons down the girl's pants. They were firm, with just the right amount of curve, and Adel could tell, even through the snow pants the chick was wearing, her cheeks were flawless. He wanted to walk up to her and have her remove all her equipment, just so he could admire her ass even better, however, fact of the matter was, her equipment actually seemed to enhance the sight: with a bandolier of 40mm grenades wrapped around her waist and an M6G pistol and holster strapped to her right thigh, they actually provided a nice outline for her rear.

"I think I've discovered why my brother decided to enlist in the Army instead of the Corps," X said after a few moments of silence.

Sam suddenly placed his rifle onto his shoulders and turned around to face Adel and X with a giant grin on his face.

"Well gents, it's been an honor," he brightly announced. "But I think I've just been selected to go work on enhancing our, uh, 'inter-service communications.' I'll see you people somewhere else."

Adel quickly grabbed Sam before he could walk away.

"Hang on, I've got dibs: I saw her first!" Adel pointed out. He yanked Sam and shoved him back in line. "You guys step back; let me show you how it's done."

Without waiting for a word of protest, Adel sauntered up to the woman. As he got closer, he could see she was busy reloading magazines for an M392 DMR she had hanging from a sling around her neck.

"Hey there," Adel said in a as suave of a voice as he could manage.

"sup." the chick replied without looking up.

"Hey… so I got to ask: what's a sexy-ass looking lady like you doing around here?" Adel slyly asked. "This doesn't seem like a place for you."

The chick stopped what she was doing and slowly looked up at him. "Ex _cuse_ me?"

"I'm just saying: why don't you and I go into one of these buildings and I can show you…" Adel's eyes flickered to the M319 the lady had strapped to her back, "…what a real grenade launcher looks?"

Adel finished his proposition with a waggling of his eyebrows. The lady stared at him –

\- and then promptly drove her knee into his crotch.

Pain erupted through his entire body and Adel reflexively grabbed his groin as he dropped to his knees. The blow itself had been bad enough, but the fact that the woman had been wearing knee pads and Marines, unlike Soldiers, generally didn't wear blast diapers, made the pain far, _far_ worse than it should have been.

"Kuso kurae, bakayarou(2)," Adel heard the woman mutter.

"Hey _PIP_! _"_

In pain, Adel nevertheless reflexively looked up to see another soldier, some Chinese-looking motherfucker, come running up. He slowed to a walk as he noticed Adel kneeling right in front of the girl.

"Everything alright here Pip?" the man asked, talking to the woman directly.

"Yeah, everything is fine here Moss," Pip casually replied. "What's up?"

Adel could see Moss glance uncertainly in his direction, and Adel could tell Moss very clearly wanted to ask for an elaboration, but he evidently decided it wasn't worth it as he said instead, "Hey. Command's got a mission for us, somewhere further in the city. We got to go, the rest of the squad is already waiting."

"Okay," Pip cheerfully replied. "Let's go then."

The two of them ran off, leaving Adel to writhe in agony. Unfortunately, as if to rub salt into the wound, he heard someone laughing from behind him and he slowly turned around to see Sam and X practically dying of laughter.

"Hey Adel!" X called out between laughs. "Remember you said you were going to show us how it was done? Well, good news: you succeeded! Now I know what _not_ to do!"

"You know," Sam added, "I'm a crayon eater, so I don't have much for brains, but I think… that was Army speak for 'fuck off.'"

The two of them dissolved into laughter once more.

"Laugh it up you assholes," Adel muttered with as much dignity as he could muster. The pain in his groin was finally fading away, enough where Adel could stand upright.

"Hey, don't get me wrong Adel: I'm very glad you're here," Sam informed him.

Adel waited for the other shoe to drop.

"…because everyone knows, every battalion needs at least one retard everyone can laugh at."

Both Sam and X burst out laughing again and as they walked away, Adel couldn't help but glance skyward. What exactly did he do wrong to deserve these assholes for teammates?

After few moments of internal stewing, Adel quickly jogged to catch up with his friends. He found them standing a few meters away, watching as Silva and Reynolds walked up to one of the Army dogfaces wearing the silver bars of a first lieutenant.

"1st Lieutenant James Lancelot. I'm acting commanding officer of all UNSC Army forces on this block. Who the hell are you?" Lancelot demanded to know before Silva or Reynolds could get a word in.

"Staff Sergeant Reynolds. This is my CO, 2nd Lieutenant Silva," Reynolds said, introducing himself. "UNSC Marine Corps. We're here to relieve you sir."

Lancelot nodded. "Good. Here's the situation."

"My troops just got finished driving off about a company sized unit of Covenant infantry, reinforced with light armor and artillery, about three mikes before you guys arrived. Given the size and composition of said attacking force, the lack of Hunter support, and being primarily led by low ranking Elites, I'm inclined to think it was nothing more than a recon in force, intended to probe our defenses, pre-spot our strongpoints for artillery, and to sap some of our strength. They were probably going to hit us with their main force in a few moments, but your arrival disrupted that plan."

"Because they're not going to know just how many Marine reinforcements we received, the Covenant are going to have to take some time to reorganize their forces. Which gives _us_ time to reorganize _our_ defenses. While my troops were using _that_ building," Lancelot pointed at the nearly destroyed building behind them, "as a strongpoint, that obviously is no longer a viable option as the structural integrity of the building has been compromised. Those Scorpions you rolled up with: they sticking around?"

"No sir," Reynolds immediately replied. "They was just supposed to escort us here. Battalion HQ is pullin' them back, holdin' them in reserve to act as a counter to any Covenant breakthrough."

Lancelot nodded, as if that had been what he was expecting. "Then I recommend falling back at least one block and setting up another defensive line there."

"Yeah, we could do that sir," Reynolds thoughtfully said. "We got some engie support; get them to reinforce the buildin', lay out some markers for artillery, and then dig in tighter than a tick. Lieutenant," he said, turning towards Silva. "Call up the engineers and tell them to bring some heavy lift gear. We don't know how much time we got, so we need to get workin' right away."

Adel could see an annoyed look appearing on Silva's face and he turned around to stare Reynolds right in the eyes.

"You seem to making a lot of decisions here Staff Sergeant," he growled.

Reynolds stared back with a look of innocence on his face, and he held up his hands in surrender. "I'm jes tryin' to help 2nd Lieutenant."

"Well, don't," Silva snapped. "Because _fuck. That_. If the Covenant are in the midst of reorganization right now, then now's the _perfect_ time to launch an attack."

"Lieutenant, military intelligence suggests there's at _least_ an entire Covenant armored division set up right in front of us," Lancelot interjected. "You've got, what, one platoon of Marines? Sure, if you want to get all your men killed, attack away. But for the rest of us who aren't interested in dying just yet, pulling back is the better option."

"Sir, I have to agree with Lieutenant Lancelot," Reynolds said. "We don't know nothin' about the force or the terrain in front of us. We attack, sure we might be able to disrupt the Covies for a mite. But it'd be too easy for them to outflank us, then we'd be wiped to the last man."

Silva whirled on him. "Let me explain something to you _Sergeant_ Reynolds," he snapped. "We are Marines. Marines _never_ retreat, they _never_ give ground. Not like the fucking _Army,"_ he sneered, throwing a disgusted look at Lancelot. "We _attack._ And if you don't like that, and you're not going to follow my orders, then I will find someone who _will._ Is that clear Sergeant!?"

Adel stood there, alongside everyone else, staring in astonishment at everything Silva had just said. As much as Adel wanted to go on the offensive, even he wasn't so gung-ho to think charging headfirst into an entire division of Covenant armor was all that smart. Plus, with the way Silva had just addressed Reynolds, Adel didn't think that was even _allowed_ in the Marine Corps.

"You said your name was Silva, huh? You wouldn't happen to be related to Major Antonio Silva of the ODSTs, would you? That old mustang?"

Everyone turned to stare at Lancelot, who was looking at Silva with a rather neutral expression on his face.

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I am," Silva replied. "He's my oldest uncle. You know him?"

"Yeah. I do," Lancelot bluntly replied. "He was the executive officer of my force reconnaissance battalion back when I was an enlisted Marine assigned to the 105th Shock Troops Division. He's one fucking hell of a Marine, let me tell you that much. Brilliant tactician. Some of the shit that he would pull… he'd leave the Covenant trying to figure out their ass from their elbow. We used to call him 'Old Man Silva' because he was one of the old school Marines: tough as hell but damn if he wasn't fucking fair. Hell of a man."

"Thank you," Silva said, a smug smile appearing on his face. "That's my uncle all right."

"Too bad his nephew is a little fucking bitch."

The smile instantly disappeared from Silva's face. _"Excuse me?"_ he hissed, rearing back as if he'd been struck.

"You heard me," Lancelot growled, taking a step forward. "Or maybe you _didn't_ because you were too fucking busy running your fucking mouth and patting yourself on the back to listen."

Adel quickly glanced at Lancelot, then at Silva, and then back at Lancelot as a look of pure fury appeared on Silva's face.

"How… dare _you,"_ Silva growled but before he could say much more, Lancelot stalked forward until he was right in Silva's face, and Adel suddenly realized just how _big_ Lancelot actually was.

"Shut. The fuck. Up," Lancelot growled in a low voice. "Staff Sergeant Reynolds here might be willing to put up with your bullshit, but I assure you, I do not have the patience for that. You see this silver bar? That means I'm an O-2, and I outrank your fucking ass so you will do exactly _what_ I fucking tell you, _when_ I fucking tell you, and _without fucking question._ And if you fail to fucking do any of that, _**I will fucking bury you.**_ Do you fucking understand _2nd Lieutenant?_ "

Lancelot waited until Silva reluctantly nodded his head before taking a step back.

"It's because of fucking officers like you who treat their Marines like nothing more than fucking toddlers that made me want to leave the Corps in the first place," Lancelot snapped. "Let me tell you something _2nd Lieutenant,_ you might be some big shot back in TECOM(3), but out in the real world, out in the field, no one gives a shit which academy you got commissioned from or how high you scored on your tests. Out here, as far as we're concerned, as a 2nd lieutenant, you know nothing. In fact, you know less than nothing. You know even less than that fucking PFC standing over there."

He jabbed a finger in Adel's direction, causing Adel to jump in surprise. He didn't expect to get singled out.

"Man, given how stupid Adel is, that's _really_ bad," he heard X mutter, and Adel quickly flicked him off behind his back.

"Your job," Lancelot continued, "is to shut your fucking mouth, open your fucking ears, and learn from your fucking betters like Staff Sergeant Reynolds here. And if you can't do that, then I hope to fucking god you have a will written out because if the fucking Covies don't get you, your ass _will_ get fragged. _**Do**_ you understand?"

" _Yes_ ," Silva hissed.

"Yes… what?"

Adel could see Silva clearly grinding his teeth together.

"Yes… _sir,"_ he finally said.

"Good," Lancelot replied in a surprisingly calm voice. "Now, keep your god damn mouth shut until I tell you otherwise because the adults are speaking."

And with that, Lancelot turned back to Reynolds and started speaking as if nothing had just happened.

"Call up the combat engineers Staff Sergeant," he ordered. "We've already wasted enough time: we got to move fast. Get your assaultmen over there to go toss a satchel charge into that building; might as well just take it down entirely, give us a clear field of fire."

"With all due respect sir, wouldn't it be better to wait for the Covies to attack? We could rig up a booby trap 'stead of a satchel, wait til Covies come by, then drop the building on top of them and take out some of them shă bī(4)," Reynolds suggested, but Lancelot quickly shook his head.

"Unless things have changed since I left the Corps, they don't teach assaultmen how to rig up something that elaborate," Lancelot said, glancing at Sam for confirmation, who nodded in affirmation. "Plus, too many things could go wrong before we have a chance to set off the charge. No, our best bet is to just to blow the building now and move on."

"Aye Lieutenant. Corporal Yilmaz?"

"On it Staff Sergeant," Sam immediately said before turning to Adel. "Adel, gimme your C-12."

Adel quickly tossed his rucksack to the ground and began digging out his plastic explosives. In the meantime, Lancelot and Reynolds continued to plan.

"What will you be doing sir?" Reynolds was asking. "Are you 'tendin' to pull back?"

Lancelot shook his head. "My orders are to hold my position, which is what I plan on doing. I just had to send my sapper squad away, so my numbers are somewhat limited, but I still got about seventeen troopers of assorted MOS's on hand. Still got two .50cals, just need some ammo, which I can steal from the 'Hogs. Once we get that, I can set them up as a heavy machine gun slash support slash reserve section. That reminds me: you got a corpsman?"

"Yes sir. PFC Nathaniel Compton sir."

"Bring him up. I got a medic who got hit early in the battle. Can't send her away, still need her. Least I can do though is get her patched up and mobile again."

"Aye sir. COMPTON!"

Compton came running up but Adel was no longer paying attention as, at that moment, Sam slapped his shoulder.

"Charge is set!" he announced. "Let's go!"

They took off running towards the building.

"You guys see anything on your IFF trackers?" Sam asked as they entered the building. "X?"

"No, I'm not picking up anything," X replied.

"Adel?"

Adel glanced down to the bottom left hand corner of his HUD where his IFF tracker was. Aside from three triangles representing himself and his team, he didn't see anything, friend, foe, or otherwise.

"I got nothing."

"Good," Sam said as he tossed the satchel to the ground and quickly rigged up a remote detonator. "Last thing we wanna do is accidently frag our own guys. Come on, let's go. We're done here."

Throwing one last glance at his tracker, Adel turned around and follow Sam out of the building.

Outside, Sam held up the remote.

"Anyone of you guys want to be the one to set this thing off?" he offered.

Adel's eyes immediately lit up. "Dibs!" he quickly yelled.

Sam snorted. "Yeah, I figured you would," he commented as he handed the remote over. "Wait til we get to a safe distance. Warhammer 1, this is 4-3 Charlie: we're ready to detonate, over."

 _"Copy. Fall back to defensive positions."_

"Wilco. Out."

 _CRACK! SMASH!_

A bright pink needle suddenly shattered against the ground, sending crystal shards in all directions.

"CONTACT REAR!" Adel heard X cry out, followed by the sound of a battle rifle going off, but Adel wasn't pay attention. Instead, he was staring in shock at where a pink crystal shard had embedded itself into the back of his hand.

Numbly, and without thinking, Adel grabbed the shard and ripped it out. Immediately, blood began spilling out of the wound. And then that was when the pain hit.

"GAH!" Adel screamed, gripping his wounded hand with his other one. "I'm hit!"

"Fall back!" Sam immediately bellowed. "X, cover!"

Reeling from pain, Adel stumbled down the street to where the new defensive line was forming. He hopped over a sandbag and into the nearest building, and found himself next to Lancelot.

"How many Tangos are out there!?" he asked.

"I don't know sir!" Adel admitted. "I got hit!"

Lancelot glanced at him and then noticed the blood streaming down his hand. He seemed to grimace before glancing over his shoulder and yelling, "WESTLEY!"

A young woman came jogging up, a bandage wrapped around her thigh, her red hair noticeable even under her helmet. She took one look at Adel and swore.

"Shit. What'd you get hit by?" she asked as she roughly grabbed his wounded hand and began pulling out a medkit.

"Shrapnel from a needle rifle!" Adel yelled back and watched as the Doc pull out a can of biofoam. He quickly looked away as she began applying the substance to his hand, so she wouldn't see him flinching.

Around him, all sorts of gunfire was beginning to ring out.

"Conserve your ammo!" Lancelot barked. "There's going to be more coming!"

Someone jumped over the sandbag and landed on the ground beside Adel. He automatically tensed up, but it was only X.

"Adel, you alright?" he asked as he reloaded.

" _I'm_ fine," Adel irritably said, doing his best to mask his pain. "I just - "

A sudden realization struck him, and he frantically started looking around.

"I drop the detonator," Adel said with a growing sense of dread. "Shit! I dropped the detonator!"

He reflexively started to move back towards the street, but the Doc quickly grabbed a hold of him.

"Hold still, I'm still working!" she growled.

"Forget about the detonator," Lancelot commanded. "We'll hit it with a rocket instead. Looks like you'll get your booby trap after all Staff Sergeant. Lance Corporal! Load up an HEDP and wait for my command!"

"Aye aye sir!"

In the meantime, Adel impatiently waited for the Doc to finish.

"Come on Doc, hurry it up, will you?"

"I'm working as fast as I can," she retorted. She pulled out a strip of fabric and wrapped it around Adel's hand, pulling it tight. "That should help keep the biofoam in place. You're not really going to be able to close your hand, but at least now you don't have to worry about bleeding out or getting an infection."

Adel experimentally flexed his hand. It was like the Doc said, while he could wiggle his fingers, he couldn't exactly make a fist.

He mentally swore. He was left handed too. He was going to have to switch shoulders if he wanted to fire his rifle, but his aim was terrible with his offhand.

Adel turned to the Doc to demand she do something about that, at the very least, loosen his bandage so that he could partially close his fist, however the Doc was already gone.

"Dammit."

"Adel, help me with this!" X demanded as he struggled with his Jackhammer.

"Fuck!"

Scooting over to X, Adel dropped his rucksack to the ground and awkwardly removed a couple of rockets, one of each type, and helped load them into the Jackhammer. Once that was complete, he took a quick inventory of his ammo: he had one rocket left, a HEAT round. X himself was carrying two rockets, one of each type, and Sam should have been carrying the last two, but now that Adel thought about it, he didn't actually know where Sam was.

"Where's Sam?" he asked.

X jerked his head in the direction of the street where gunfire was still ringing out. "Still out there with some of the dogfaces taking out that Jackal that took a potshot at us."

Adel grunted in acknowledgement before hefting his rifle and studying it, trying to figure out the best way to hold it so that it would both be stable, as well as not spit burning hot brass casings into his face.

The sound of heavy footsteps, as well as the loud pitch whine of gravity engines in the distance caused Adel to look up, and he saw Sam, a handful of Soldiers, with Reynolds following up the rear, sprinting down the street. Lancelot quickly stood up and waved at them, and Adel could see the group turn and head in his direction.

"Sergeant Restrepo!" Lancelot barked as they started leaping over the barricade into cover. "Get your troops in order! Redistribute your ammo, and standby to defend yourself!"

"Yes sir!"

"Adel, you okay?" Sam immediately asked as he tossed himself onto the ground next to him.

Adel held up his bandaged hand. "I'm pissed off as hell, but the corpsman's already patched up my hand. You get the son of a bitch who shot me?"

"Got part of him," Sam distractedly replied as he removed the rockets from his rucksack and tossed them over. "Here, take this shit: we're going to need it!"

"Staff Sergeant Reynolds!" Lancelot barked out. "Status?"

"Oh lawd, they comin'," Reynolds replied with a chuckle.

"What is?"

"Armor and infantry. Lotta infantry."

"Right. Here's the plan: you take 2nd Squad, cover the east. You tell Silva to take 1st Squad and cover the west. And you tell him he is to keep his ass right there, come hell or high water. He gets any fucked up notions of launching a counterattack or some shit like that, frag his ass. That clear?"

"Aye sir."

"I'll hold the center with Weaps Section, as well as the HQ section, and we'll put 3rd in reserve. Questions?"

Reynolds shook his head. "No sir."

"Good. Let's make 'em holler!"

Reynolds gave a single nod before taking off in the direction of 2nd Squad. At the same time, the sounds of the incoming Covenant grew louder and louder.

"Come on you bastards, come on," Adel muttered to himself as he adjusted his grip on his rifle. "I got something for all of ya."

"Adel, forget the rifle: stay with X and help him with the Jackhammer," Sam commanded.

"But I - " Adel started to protest.

"Shut the fuck up and fucking do it."

Grumbling to himself, Adel slung his rifle over his shoulder and took up his position on the other side of the Jackhammer. As he got close, he could hear X muttering something.

"- from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remembered - we few, we happy few...(5)"

"X, what the fuck are you saying?" Adel demanded.

"It's Shakespeare," X announced, as if that explained everything.

"Who the fuck is that!?"

Adel could see X peering at him over the top of the Jackhammer with a wiry grin. "Dude, we really need to work on your cultural education. At this point, this is just embarrassing."

Adel snorted. "Like I give a shit," he said, more to himself than anything.

The rocks on the ground began to rattle and Adel glanced up to see dust falling from the ceiling as the road began to shake. Whatever was coming was either very big, or there was a whole ton of them. Making sure he was in the proper position, Adel glanced behind him to preemptively ensure the backblast area was cleared.

Movement at the end of the block caught his eye, and Adel immediately tensed. He held his breath as he spotted the edge of the glowing orange energy shield, followed by the Jackal holding on to it, as the creature rounded the corner. The Jackal stood there for a moment, shield held high in front of him with plasma pistol sticking up and over the barrier, as the alien carefully scanned the road in front of him. Then, Adel could very clearly see the creature gesturing behind him with his pistol hand. At once, more Covenant infantry began rounding the corner. Following them were even more Covenant soldiers. All the while, the rumbling in the background continued to grow in pitch.

Slowly bring his rifle up, Adel started counting. The Covenant had split into two groups, with both groups simultaneously advancing down either side of the street towards the UNSC positions. The Jackals were leading the way, with their shields active in front of them. Following the Jackals were a number of Elites, wearily scanning every doorway and window that overlooked the road. Following up the rear were the Grunts, all toting a random assortment of firearms. Total, Adel counted about a dozen Jackals, twice as many Grunts, and a handful of Elites.

"Standby Lance Corporal," Lancelot whispered as the Covenant began approaching the building the satchel charge was in. "Standby..."

Adel could feel a drop of sweat sliding down the side of his face as he waited.

The Covenant reached the building.

"Lance Corporal: DO IT."

X took a deep breath and stood up.

"ROCK - !" he started to scream just as he pulled both the trigger and Adel had just enough time to remember to relax his jaw before -

 _ **WHOMPWHOOMP!**_

Two rockets went screaming down the street! In a blink of an eye, they slammed right through the outer wall of the target building before the wall itself bulged outwards as the rockets detonated, triggering the satchel charge left inside.

 _ **BOOOMMMMMM!**_

What few walls were left of the building instantly shattered as the ground floor exploded! A massive tidal wave of debris swept through the streets and the air became flooded with dust as the building promptly collapsed! The half of the Covenant soldiers that had been standing right next to the building were instantly consumed by the torrent, while the other half was completely knocked off balance, having been caught flat-footed by the blast. To their credit, they immediately scattered, but it was too late.

 _ **BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!**_

Machine gun fire rang out as both of the Army's heavy machine guns opened up. .50 caliber SLAP rounds sliced right through the ranks of the Covenant, cutting through armor and flesh alike, ripping off entire limbs, and causing some of the aliens to practically explode, painting the ground with all sorts of entrails. The initial group was almost completely wiped out to the last being in a matter of seconds, but already more Covenant infantry was pouring out from around the corner.

"Restrepo, SHIFT FIRE LEFT!" Lancelot bellowed. "Marines! OPEN FIRE!"

Rifle fire tore through the dusty air and into the ranks of the Covenant. They Covenant took advantage of the wreckage left over from the destroyed building, quickly finding cover amongst the debris strewn street. They immediately retaliated, however most of the plasma fire impacted harmlessly against the Marine's defensive barricades. That is, until -

"WRAITH!"

With a loud rumble, a Covenant assault Wraith rounded the corner. Armed with an assault cannon similar to the ones used by Hunters instead of the standard plasma mortar, the Wraith fired its main cannon directly at the UNSC forces, all the while its dual anti-infantry plasma turrets laid down copious amounts of fire.

"INCOMING!"

Adel ducked his head as the radiative green projectile streaked through the air overhead and exploded amongst the Army troopers. Cries of "MEDIC" began ringing out over the radio and glancing over his shoulder, Adel could see that redhead corpsman dashing away from her spot next to Lancelot.

"Contact, enemy Wraith!" Lancelot bellowed even as the Wraith fired again. "Assault squad: take it out!"

"ADEL!" X yelled. "Got to reload!"

"On it!"

X popped open the chamber and Adel nimbly ripped out the spent rocket casings and hurtled them to the side. Replacing them with a couple of HEAT rounds, Adel slammed the chamber closed and patted X on the back of his helmet.

"Up!"

"ROCKET!"

 _ **WHOMP!**_

The rocket sped down range but by that time, the Wraith had fully turned the corner, exposing its front hull, and the rocket glanced off the Wraith's bulbous nose.

"DEFLECTION!" Sam roared over the bark of his rifle. "Reengage!"

"Hit that fucker at the base of the main cannon!" Adel yelled into X's ear.

"I know what I'm doing!" X retorted as he toggled a switch and the gears on the Jackhammer rotated, placing the second rocket in line with the barrel.

Unfortunately, that initial rocket had already caught the attention of the Wraith gunner.

 _ **FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ!**_

"Down!" Adel screamed, shoving X to the ground as the Wraith turned one of its plasma turrets in their direction. Plasma began raining down all around them, showering them with burning dirt and ash and preventing them from moving in any direction. "Lieutenant! Assault Squad is pinned down!"

"RESTREPO! HIT THAT FUCKING TANK!" Adel heard Lancelot roar.

Bullets began ricocheting off the Wraith's hull as even .50 caliber armored piercing incendiary rounds weren't enough to do more than scratch the paint off the armor. However, against the more lightly armored anti-personnel turrets, the rounds were more than enough, and poking his head up, Adel could see a small blue flash, then sparks began leaping from the turret as it was destroyed, severing the deluge of plasma and giving Adel and X their window.

"X, HIT THAT FUCKING THING!"

X stood up.

"ROCKET!"

Adel could see a small hole, surrounded by molten orange armor appear at the base of the Wraith's main cannon, before the entire top of the Wraith erupted. The assault cannon shot straight up into the air like the top of a shaken bottle of soda, while blue flames shot out the back of the Wraith. The Covenant vehicle instantly lost all power and went crashing to the ground as its gravity engines failed.

There was a small _clang_ as the hatch to the driver's compartment opened, and the Elite driver hopped out.

"Hey! Shoot that asshole!" Adel yelled, grabbing his rifle and opening fire, but with his wounded hand, his aim just wasn't there. Adel could see puffs of dust rising from the ground as his bullets impacted all around the Elite, and Adel desperately tried to compensate, but it just wasn't happening.

As he finished off the rest of his magazine, the Elite slid into cover inside a nearby blast crater, quickly reemerging with plasma rifle in hand. The Elite had just enough time to pull the trigger when a 40mm grenade landed in the crater, blowing the Elite to shreds.

"Shit," Adel hissed. He still had yet to score a single kill.

"ASSAULT SQUAD, DISPLACE!" Lancelot suddenly screamed and Adel looked up as a second Wraith abruptly appeared from behind the first one.

"Oh fuck!"

Adel grabbed all his stuff and scrambled out of his hole, X and Sam following close behind on his heels. He had only managed to make it a few meters when the Wraith fired.

 _ **BOOOSSHHHH... KABOOM!**_

The shockwave ripped through the ground, knocking Adel clean off his feet. He fell, eating a mouthful of dirt as he hit the ground face first.

Rolling on the ground, he instinctively looked for his rifle, finding it sitting on the ground nearby.

"Come on Adel, get up, GET UP!" Sam yelled from somewhere above him.

Adel looked up in time to see a massive piece of ordnance drop out of the sky and land directly on top of the Wraith. The ensuing explosion completely obliterated the Wraith, and the blast was so strong, even from a block and a half away, Adel could feel the pressure from the shockwave.

"The hell was that!?"

"Bendis is calling in fire support!" Sam yelled. "Enough with the twenty fucking questions Marine, let's go!"

"GRENADE!"

A plasma grenade exploded nearby, knocking Adel and Sam back down.

"Fuck! X, COVER!"

"I'm covering!"

Adel scrambled up to his hands and knees and moved to recover his weapons and all the remaining rockets as he heard X opening up with his rifle.

"Adel, dammit, we need to - "

"INCOMING!"

Hearing the telltale _swoosh_ of an incoming plasma mortar, Adel needed no further promoting: he took off running for the nearest building. He had almost made it when he heard the screaming of the mortars from somewhere behind him and -

 _ **KABOOM KABOOM!**_

Hot air washed over him and shrapnel slammed into the ground around him, but fortunately the mortars landed too far away to hit him. Nevertheless, Adel dove head first into the building, landing on a heap of rubble with a loud _thud_.

Scrambling upright, he seized his rifle and emptied the magazine downrange to try and cover for Sam and X as they darted inside.

"Up two five, charge three!"

"Hanging!"

"Fire!"

Adel glanced around. The building he had landed in was already occupied by Sergeant Badger and his mortar team. They had set up their mortar and appeared to be attempting to lay down some counter battery fire. Adel wished them the best of luck, but he honestly wasn't sure what sixty mortars could do against mortar Wraiths.

"Adel, get that fucking Jackhammer reloaded and stand by for more enemy armor!" Sam bellowed at him.

 _ **FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ!**_

Adel ducked his head as plasma bolts smashed against the building wall, sending dust and shattered chunks of brick in all directions. Someone started screaming, and Adel looked up to see one of the mortarmen had been hit.

"MAN DOWN!" the mortar gunner screamed.

"Who's been hit? Hightower, who's been hit!" Badger yelled back.

"Roland!"

"Shit! CORPSMAN!"

With plasma still spraying the area, Adel dropped to the ground and crawled over to where the man laid to see if he could help. The Marine, Roland, had been hit in the left shoulder, and the high velocity plasma bolt had damn near torn his arm off. The plasma had instantly melted through Roland's left pauldron, incinerated his uniform, and burned right through his flesh leaving a _very_ nasty looking hole, large enough for Adel to put his fist through, and leaving the rest of his shoulder blackened and shriveled. The smell was horrendous, and Roland's screams of pain caused chills to go down Adel's spine.

Slinging his rifle, Adel reached down to his IFAK and pulled out a can of biofoam but truth be told, he had no idea what he was supposed to do with a wound this bad. Fortunately, he was saved from having to figure it out when Sam grabbed him and roughly pulled him to his feet.

"Forget about the damn wounded, leave that to Compton!" he snarled. "Pay attention to your fucking job! Get that fucking Jackhammer back up to operational status!"

"Aye Corporal!" Adel reflexively bellowed.

He scooted over to where X was struggling to reload the Jackhammer by himself. As he pulled out a pair of fresh rockets, he glanced over his shoulder in time to see Compton diving into the building and sliding to a stop right next to Roland. Without a second glance, he began working.

With plasma mortars continuing to rain down from above, and Marine rifle fire crackling all around him, Adel suddenly realized that his earlier thought at the stadium had been wrong. That hadn't been what war was like. With Marines going down left and right, artillery and aircraft screaming overhead, and gunfire being exchanged at a frantic rate… _this_ was a war.

"Adel, we got more incoming! Get your rifle up!"

As Adel snapped his rifle up and began empting the magazine downrange, he was struck by a sudden realization:

War was not turning out to be nearly as fun as he thought it would.

"MARINE, FIRE YOUR WEAPON!"

* * *

1\. This is actually a partial quote. The full quote is normally given as follows:

"When a person inflates his own importance, he does not see his own sins and his sin get bigger right along with him."

\- Leo Tolstoy

2\. Kuso kurae, bakayarou: as far as I can tell, these are Japanese swear words.

\- kuso karae: roughly means "Eat shit"

\- bakayarou: literally means "Idiot," but in effect, it's used similar to the way "asshole" is used in English

3\. TECOM: Marine Corps **T** raining and **E** ducation **Com** mand. Basically, the Marine Corps equivalent to the Army's TRADOC, which is the command responsible for the enlistment, training, and education of their respective personnel. I've read somewhere, at least in regards to TRADOC, there's a bit of disconnect between what TRADOC thinks, and what _actually_ happens in the field.

4\. shă bī: Chinese. Literally translated into "foolish vagina," it essentially means "stupid cunt."

5\. This is a small part of William Shakespeare's famous "St Crispin's Day Speech" from his play, _Henry V_. Most people probably don't recognize these lines, but everyone would probably recognize the very next line: "we happy few, _we band of brothers_ ; for he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother…"

General Notes

For those of you who don't quite get it, Pip, Moss, Lancelot, and Westley are all characters from my other story, _Missing in Action._ Moss and Pip were part of the main cast, while 1st Lieutenant Lancelot and Doc Westley was their platoon commander and platoon medic, respectively, though they only showed up in two chapters (chapters 1 and 2. Lancelot did get a mention in chapters 9 and 12, but only in flashbacks.)

If you go back to _Missing in Action_ and read chapter 2, at the very end, there is mention of Moss and his platoon being relieved by a unit of Marines. Those Marines are intended to be Adel and his platoon, which means this chapter takes place (chronologically) between chapters 2 and 3 of _Missing in Action._ You guys are going to see a few more tie-ins like this in future chapters, none of which are going to be super essential to the plot of the story, and all of which I'll be explaining in notes like this one at the end of their respective chapters. So, that means reading my other story won't be necessary to understanding this one.

However, if you guys _were_ to go back and read it… well, I certainly won't be objecting…

Other Notes:

Just in case anyone was wondering, and because I can't think of a way to integrate this information into the story itself, but Adel and team are assaultmen. An assaultman is a former United States Marine Corps occupation within the infantry branch. Their MOS code used to be 0351, however the entire MOS field was actually phased out by the USMC just recently, back in 2018.

So, what was an assaultman? Basically, assaultmen were Marines responsible for the destruction of enemy fortifications, which they accomplished through the use of a variety of weapons, most notably the Mk. 153 shoulder-mounted assault weapon, or SMAW for short. The SMAW is an 83mm, general purpose, anti-armor, anti-fortification, reloadable, recoilless rifle (one of the two used by the US military.) Even though the SMAW does have anti-tank rounds, my understanding is that the SMAW was never actually intended for the anti-tank role (which would have been the role of the BGM-71 "TOW" missile launcher.)

Other tools used by an assaultman would have been the APOBS and the Bangalore torpedo, both of which are used to destroy static obstacles like barbed wire and mine fields, as well as C-4 explosives. Basically, from what I understand, Marine assaultmen are kind of like Army combat engineers, only assaultmen focus on the "offensive" part of the combat engineer's job, and not the defensive (i.e., assaultmen aren't responsible for building defensive fortifications, trenches, anti-tank barriers, etc., or conducting route clearance missions, all of which would be the responsibility of actual Marine Corps combat engineers.)

So, that's that for the reintroduction of Adel the Marine. Next time, we move on to other characters. I'm curious as to what you guys think of Adel though because my editor, **Darkfire7881,** _hates_ him :)

Until next time…

Enjoy.


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter 25**

 **Newington, Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
1503**

 **Tariq**

"Look at those assholes. Look how clean and shiny their hulls are. What the fuck."

"I know, right? Can't fucking believe we're being reinforced by the fucking Cunt Munchers. Seriously: couldn't Command have sent us some _real_ armored units to back us up?"

"Technically, I think cavalry divisions _are_ classified as being armored units."

"Fuck that shit man. You ever see the inside of a Bison(1)? Their armor is fucking paper thin. They ain't no armored unit. Plus, they got wheels, and everyone knows treads can do everything wheels can do, but better."

"Oh, I know. I'm just saying: that's what the Army calls them."

"Pricks," Chenko snarled as he viciously jabbed his shovel into the ground.

Tariq nodded in agreement as he reached up and scooped out the now flavorless pinch of chewing tobacco in his mouth and tossing it away. He pulled out his can to get a fresh pinch, only to find he was out.

"Shit," he muttered as he began patting himself down, hoping to find another can, only to remember he had left his extra supplies in his tank. "God dammit."

"What's up?" Chenko asked.

"I'm out of dip."

"That it? Don't worry bro, I got you covered."

Pulling out a can of his own, Chenko tossed it over to Tariq, who gratefully grabbed a pinch.

"Thanks," he said, shoving it into his mouth –

\- and nearly gagged.

"Fuck!"

"What," Chenko bluntly asked.

"Dude, what is it with you and this fucking flavored dip man?" Tariq cursed as he glanced at the can. "'Citrus flavored?' The fuckity faggotity ass shit is this? Whatever happened to the good old 'natural' flavor?"

"Hey!" Chenko snapped. "If you don't fucking like it, don't fucking take it man."

"Too late for that shit," Tariq muttered. More loudly he said, "Aren't you fucking Russian? I thought 'mother Russia make you stronk?' What's with the flavored shit then?"

"Okay, first off dumbass, I'm Cossack, not fucking Russian," Chenko heatedly replied, and Tariq did his best to hide his smirk. He always found it rather amusing to try and set Chenko off on a rant like that. Unfortunately, he didn't hide his smirk well enough because Chenko paused mid-sentence, his eyes narrowing until they were nothing more than slits.

"Ohhhh, I know what you're doing," Chenko growled. "Well buddy, it ain't fucking working this time!"

Tariq snorted, and then spat to the side, grimacing. Fucking citrus.

"Man, there is something slightly disturbing about the way you two are talking to each other."

Tariq looked up to see one of Chenko's men digging in the next foxhole over, looking at them with a strange look on his face.

"You got a problem with two men trying to have a conversation with each other Contras?" Chenko immediately snapped.

Contras jumped and looked surprise. "No Sergeant, talk away. It's just… do you have to do it when one of you's on the shitter?"

Tariq and Chenko exchanged looks, and Tariq absentmindedly scratched his bare thigh as, coincidently, at the same time, he let out a loud fart.

"What's wrong with needing to take a shit?" Tariq heatedly demanded to know. "It's a perfectly natural thing."

"I know _that,_ " Contras replied, sounding mildly amused. "But… well, aren't you bothered by the lack of privacy?"

"Let me tell you something about my buddy here, Mister Freddy Contras," Chenko began. "Me and Sergeant Helmand here served in the same tank for damn near over a year. It was me in the driver's seat, him in the turret, and Sergeant Duvall as the TC. During that year, we trained. A lot. Ended up eating, breathing, and practically sleeping together. When we were on Draco III, some of the fighting got so bad, we literally were not allowed to leave the tank, so we ended up having to piss and shit in there. Once you've been through _that_ with somebody, you find that little things like 'privacy,' don't really matter much to you anymore."

"Yeah… what he said," Tariq lamely added. Then he let out another partially loud and obnoxious fart. "Ooh, that was juicy!"

A slightly disgusted look appeared on Contras' face, and he started to look a bit green around the gills. "You guys are like fucking three year olds," he muttered, before disappearing below ground.

Tariq and Chenko exchanged a glance before bursting out laughing.

"Fucking new guys, am I right?" Tariq said between chortles. "Squeamish little fuckers, aren't they?"

Chenko merely shrugged. "Yeah. Well, they'll learn to get used to it. _We_ certainly had to."

The smile instantly slid off Tariq's face. "Yeah," he said, looking down. "Yeah…"

Chenko hesitated. "Hey… do you ever… think about what _could_ have been if we – "

"No." Tariq instantly replied, cutting Chenko off. "I don't think about it at all. And you shouldn't either. Let the past go dude."

"Yeah… I guess you're right," Chenko quietly said.

An awkward silence descended on them.

Letting out a sigh, Tariq decided he was done with his business. Standing up, he cleaned himself off and pulled his pants back up. Then, moving the bottomed out ammo can he had been using as a shitter, he grabbed a nearby shovel and buried his waste as best he could.

"Well, I'll have to catch you later man," Tariq declared, making sure he had his SMG. "Mechanics are bound to have finished patching up Lillian by now, and with the Cunt Munchers taking our place on the line, you _know_ Command's probably about to make us go poke the sleeping dragon."

"Motherfuckers," Chenko said, spitting to the side. "Easy for them to make those decisions; it's not their asses hanging out in the wind."

Tariq nodded in agreement, but didn't say anything. Not that there was much to say.

He was about to head out when Chenko suddenly called out, "Yo T!"

Tariq glanced over his shoulder. "The fuck do you want."

"When'd you start naming your tank like that?" Chenko genuinely asked. "Never pulled that shit before Draco III."

"That's Noble's thing," Tariq explained. "She's the one who wanted to do that. I figured: what the fuck, you know?"

Chenko snorted. "Fucking POGs. Hey! You better get out of here before your FNG throws another track."

Tariq grimaced. "Yeah…"

Without another word, he pulled himself out of the hole and took off in a full-tilt sprint towards his tank, to try and minimize his chance of becoming a target. Despite the Covenant not having fired so much as a plasma bolt in their direction after calling off their attack three hours ago, Tariq know that, that could change at any second, and the last thing Tariq wanted was to get stuck out in the open during an artillery barrage.

Sliding into safety into Lillian's hull down position, Tariq found Corona sitting by Lillian's exhaust vent, shelling some peanuts and apparently trying to stay warm.

"Hey Sergeant," he said. "How was your shit?"

Immediately he cringed, as if he couldn't believe he had just said that, but Tariq barely gave it any heed.

"The fuck do you care?" he demanded, breathing hard. As a tanker, Tariq wasn't used to sprinting like that anymore.

"Just trying to make conversation," Corona innocently replied.

"Don't," Tariq shortly said. He jerked his head in Lillian's direction. "What's our status? Don't see the mechanics anywhere. They finished?"

"Yeah, they finished up about five minutes ago," Corona reported. "They fixed all the holes and replaced some of the more worn out armored plating, but the chief mechanic did want to warn me that all his crew did was patch things up. And that patch jobs out in the field are nowhere near as good as ones at the motor pool."

"Well, that was never an option for us," Tariq distractedly replied as he studied Lillian's hull. He could see the slightly discolored spots where the mechanics had installed new plates, but from a distance, they weren't all that noticeable. Good. That meant the Covenant wouldn't be able to target them specifically.

"We also got more fuel and ammo," Corona added, then paused. "Why are we getting resupplied by the Colonial Militia?"

"We're getting resupplied by everybody," Tariq absentmindedly told him. "Including the Colonial Militia."

"Yeah, I mean, I was just wondering: what happened to our own logistics guys?"

"Cause, with the one five fives being some of the only things preventing us from gettin' overrun, our logistical support was moved to support them. Normally, we'd get extra support from Division, however, from what I hear, our divisional sustainment brigade has been scattered to the four winds with half the unit MIA, including their CO, Colonel Menteith. That leaves the CM as the only ones available for support."

Tariq paused and glanced over at Corona. "Why the fuck does it matter to you where our supplies come from?"

Corona shrugged. "It doesn't. I was just talking to one of the drivers, Private Marcus Olsen. He was telling me he only joined his unit this morning!"

"Yeah, that's what happens when the Covenant invades a colony moron," Tariq snapped. "Everyone gets thrown into the shit. That's why I'm stuck with you."

To his mild annoyance, Corona seemed to take his snide attitude in stride and merely shrugged in response.

"Where's Noble?" Tariq asked instead, changing the topic.

"She and Captain Lightfoot went over to battalion HQ about ten minutes ago, though I don't know why."

Tariq mentally nodded to himself. He had a feeling he knew exactly what it was about and if it turned out he was correct, then he didn't have much more personal time left. Time for a meal.

Unslinging his SMG from around his shoulders, he scanned the ground for a relatively clean spot to sit down. He was just about to get settled in, when he heard someone running towards them. Tariq automatically tensed, but then relaxed when Noble poked her head over the edge of the hole.

"You two," she said without preamble. "Drop whatever you're doing and come with me. Captain Lightfoot is holding a briefing."

Corona looked up, startled, but Tariq couldn't bring himself to so much as groan. He had a feeling he knew what this was about and in some ways, he was _almost_ looking forward to it. He was starting to feel on edge, waiting for something to happen.

The three of them dashed across the open field to where Captain Lightfoot and his tank were positioned. Sliding into the hole, they were confront not only with Lightfoot and his crew, but also the executive officer as well as the remaining platoon commanders and their sergeants.

"This everyone?" Lightfoot asked, addressing Noble.

"Yes sir."

"Good, let's begin. All right, as everyone should have noticed by now, we're being joined on the line by the vanguard of the 7th Cavalry Division. While their Bisons might not have as much armor or firepower as our Grizzlies or even Armadillos have, their presence here greatly boosters our defenses."

Lightfoot paused and Tariq silently waited, sensing a "but" incoming.

"But," Lightfoot began and Tariq suppressed a groan. Sometimes, he hated being right. "Because of that and because those Bisons are better served in a hull down position as opposed to being on the offensive during a conventional battle such as this, Command has decided to reallocate 2nd Brigade to other tasks. Namely, to go on the offensive."

Lightfoot activated a holographic map of the area. "Three hours ago, the Covenant invasion force ceased all attempts to break out from their LZ and push south of Byzas. Instead, they shifted the weight of their attack north, to the city proper. We're still not a hundred percent sure why, but XIV Corps SIGINT(2) is picking up a lot of high level, heavily encrypted radio traffic between the invasion force, and their fleet in orbit."

Tariq couldn't help but be intrigued by that. He wondered what that all meant. High level encryption would imply that the Covenant commanders of both the invasion force and the invasion fleet were in constant contact with each other, which by itself wouldn't be all that unusual. However, with the way the Covenant Army was reacting, Tariq had to wonder what exactly it was that had gotten the Elites all riled up.

Sadly, no answered seemed forthcoming as Lightfoot continued with his briefing.

"Unfortunately, north of the city would have been the AO's of our sister divisions, the 71st and 119th Infantry Divisions who, for obvious reasons, aren't there. With the other three quarters of our Division in complete disarray, there's not a whole lot of defenses north of the city, which is perhaps why the Covenant decided to shift their attack north. At any case, High Command decided to drop reinforcements in the form of the 222nd Airborne Division and the 9th Marine Expeditionary Force. Despite this influx though, all UNSC forces north of the city are getting hammered, hard."

"Of course," Tariq heard one of the platoon commanders mutter to his platoon sergeant. "That's what happens when you send light infantry divisions to fight in an armored war."

Tariq snorted in agreement, but quickly quieted himself when he noticed Noble glaring in his direction.

"In order to try and relieve some of that pressure," Lightfoot continued, "General Langley has ordered us to launch an attack on Covies positions just north of us. Our objective is twofold: draw some of the Covenant's attention back on to us and, because our intelligence right now is so spotty, gather some intel as to the Covenant's current disposition, as well as mark Covie strong points for future demolition by artillery or airstrikes."

"So, basically sir," one of the platoon sergeants asked, "we're doing a recon by fire?"

"Basically."

Tariq silently groaned. He hated recons by fire.

"The bad news is," Lightfoot continued, "is because we're just doing a raid, Command has decided for us to go light: this attack will only involve us, the tankers of Kilo Company. We will **not** have any infantry, sapper, or SPAAG support."

This time, Tariq didn't even bother hiding his groan. Despite their great size and massive firepower, a tank without infantry support was one of the most vulnerable war machines on the battlefield.

"Quiet!" Noble snapped and with a start, Tariq realized he hadn't been the only one groaning. "Alright, settle down people!"

Lightfoot waited until everyone had quiet down before continuing.

"I realize this situation isn't the most ideal," he drily said, "but unfortunately, those are our orders. The good news is, we'll have plenty of fires support: aside from all our regular artillery, the Actium Navy has a missile destroyer, the ANS _Serenity(3)_ , parked some three hundred klicks off shore, ready to provide us with some cruise missile support."

That... actually made Tariq feel a bit better. While the Actium Navy was strictly a blue-water navy, thus limiting their versatility, Tariq knew just about every single one of their ships was capable of firing "Pilum" hypersonic cruise missiles. Not only was each missile capable of carrying a 450kg explosive warhead, which was a little over four time the weight of a standard 203mm high explosive shell, each missile was also capable of hitting a target the size of a soda can from nearly 2000km away. And Tariq knew a missile destroyer like the Serenity was capable of carrying up to _ninety-six_ of these missiles.

In short, that was one heck of a lot of firepower at their disposal.

"As such," Lightfoot continued, "the XO and I have been both issued a target locator specifically synced with the _Serenity_. If we run into any strong points we can't bypass, we'll level it."

"Our objective is this circle right here." Lightfoot pointed at a spot on the map approximately three blocks inside the city limits. "Savvas Circle. MI _thinks_ that's where all the plasma mortars this morning had originated. Whatever the case is, we go in, blow a bunch of shit up, and then we leave. Period. It's about as simple as that. Marching order will be 1st and 2nd Platoons with the XO and me on the left and right flanks, respectively, with First Sergeant Noble and 3rd Platoon in reserve. Any questions? Good. Platoon leaders, go brief your men. We're Oscar Mike in seven."

Tariq automatically turned to Noble as the group broke apart.

"You two," she ordered as she walked towards Tariq and Corona. "I have to go check on the other platoons. Go prep Lillian, and make ready to step off."

"Got it First Sergeant," Tariq replied and smacked Corona on the shoulder. "Let's go kid."

After a quick glance outside of the hole for possible Covie contacts and finding none, Tariq took off running back towards his tank, hopping onto the top of Lillian herself.

With the knowledge he only had a couple of minutes before the start of the mission, Tariq quickly scrambled to the rear turret bustle where his rucksack was stowed. Reaching into it, he dug around until he found an MRE, before scrambling through the top hatch and plopping himself behind his station. Tearing open the MRE, he ignored the main entree and instead pulled out the desert, which in this case was some sort of toaster tart. Taking a bite out of it, Tariq hastily strapped himself in as Corona activated the tank, and Lillian came to life.

"Hey Sergeant?" Tariq heard Corona say. "I got a question."

"Good for you," Tariq replied between bites.

Corona gave a small laugh. "Nice. Well, I just wanted to ask something: what's a recon by fire?"

Tariq swallowed.

"Seriously?" he asked as soon as his mouth was empty. "It's exactly what it sounds like: we're reconing everything in front of us, by shooting everything in sight."

"That doesn't seem like a very incognito way of doing things," Corona noted with a frown. "If we go around lighting everything up, won't the Covenant see us coming from like, half a continent away? Plus, I thought we had all sorts of cavalry squadrons and surveillance units for this very thing."

"Did you not listen to a damn word Lightfoot said a minute ago?" Tariq demanded. "First, the Covenant seeing us coming is the entire damn point. The point of a recon by fire is to throw so much gunfire in the Covies' direction, they're forced to shoot back which in turn, reveals their position. And the reason why we're doing that is _because_ there's no way we can sneak a recon unit across no-man's land without the Covenant noticing. And if the Covies are going to see you coming no matter what, might as well send your strongest forces to root them out."

"That seems rather dangerous," Corona noted. "If we don't know what's in front of us, how do we know we're not about to drive into an ambush?" He paused. "Is that why you were groaning during the briefing?"

Tariq glanced around his work station to stare at the back of Corona's head. "Dude, do you realize how fucking creepy that is, you paying that much attention to me?"

He could see Corona shrugging. "Sorry. I can't help but notice these things."

"Well, figure it out," Tariq demanded. "Otherwise, I just might have to shoot you."

"Hey!" Noble snapped as she climbed into the tank. "No shooting your teammates!"

Tariq resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "Figure of speech First Sergeant," he assured her.

"Well... nevertheless, if you're going to shoot anyone, shoot the Covenant, got it?"

"Yes First Sergeant."

"Good. Gunner: what's our status?"

"Everything looks good on my end First Sergeant," Tariq reported.

"Driver? How about you?"

"Green across the board First Sergeant and ready to move out on your command."

"Good. 07 to all 03 victors: we're moving out." Noble lowered her radio. "Driver? Move us out!"

Tariq braced himself as Corona threw the tank into gear and proceeded to back the tank up onto the surface. Behind him, he could feel a cold breeze on his back as Noble opened the hatch and climbed out.

Calmly munching on the rest of his food, Tariq looked around as Corona drove in the direction where the rest of the company was gathering to form up before advancing on the Covenant.

Sitting in the center of everything was Lightfoot, with the upper half of his body sticking out from his hatch. Swiveling his optics around, Tariq watched as Lightfoot visibly counted, probably checking to make sure the entire company had assembled. Not that there were that many tanks to count: at this point in the day, seven hours into the invasion, Kilo Company had already been reduced to a mere eleven tanks. Tariq had hoped they wouldn't lose any more than that, but given their mission, he had a feeling that wasn't going to be possible.

Apparently confirming everyone in the company had arrived and was in position, Lightfoot waved his hand forward, and the entire formation began moving out.

 _"Driver, keep your pace,"_ Noble commanded over the radio. _"And keep your spacing too; don't get too close to 3-1 or 3-3 on either side of us."_

"Copy."

For his part, Tariq grabbed his controls and began panning his turret around, searching for hostiles.

The field was littered with all sorts of wrecked vehicles; souvenirs from the Covenant's first few failed attacks. While teams of Army engineers had been steadily going out to remove some of those wrecks, both to prevent the Covenant from retrieving and repairing them, as well as clearing the fields of fire for the MLR, there were still enough of them around that the possibility of Covenant hunter-killer teams lying in wait among them still existed, however remote.

 _"Alright, eyes peeled everyone,"_ Noble commanded over the radio. _"As of right now, we are in bad guy country. You see any movement, assume hostile and engage. Gunner, confirm."_

"Copy that," Tariq calmly confirmed.

They continued slowly making their way across no-man's land. Outside, Tariq could hear shrieking as an entire salvo of MRLS rockets passed by overhead and across the field, he could see plumes of dust shooting up into the air as the rockets landed amongst the Covenant positions on the edge of the city. Tariq sighed. Well, if the Covenant hadn't initially noticed Tariq and his company approach, they certainly would now.

 _"Gunner!"_ Noble called out. _"Standby! Alpha and Bravo Sections are about ready to open up on every probable Covenant position! Keep your eyes peeled; I want you to help spot for any return fire, and mark them for artillery strikes!"_

"Yeah, roger that First Sergeant!" Tariq yelled back.

Pushing away from his primary sight, he switched over to his secondary sight and waited. About ten meters in front of them and spread out in a rough line were the eight tanks that made up Alpha and Bravo Sections. Looking around, Tariq could see all the tank commanders sticking out from their hatches with binoculars pressed against their faces, scanning for targets. All of a sudden, everyone simply opened up.

 _ **BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!**_

Tank shells landed amongst the buildings sitting on the edge of the city, smashing through walls and blowing out entire rooms. As debris came crash down to the street below, Tariq carefully scanned the buildings, looking for telltale signs of Covenant activity: muzzle flashes, splotches of neon color that normally wouldn't belong in human architecture, or just simple movement. Strangely enough though, he saw none of that.

 _"Gunner, anything?"_

"Negative," Tariq reported as he carefully swept the area with his sights once more. "I'm not seeing any movement."

 _"Actual, this is 07, negative contact, over,"_ he heard Noble report over the radio.

 _"Copy that. Alpha and Bravo Sections, maintain fire."_

The tanks fired again, sending another salvo down range. With the smoke and the dust from the explosions quickly filling the air, it was getting harder for Tariq to see, but sweeping his sights across the entire Covenant line, Tariq was pretty sure he knew what he saw: nothing.

"No sign of movement First Sergeant!" Tariq barked over his shoulder.

 _"Copy."_

"You'd think the Covenant would have started firing back by now!" Corona yelled from the front of the tank even as Alpha and Bravo fired a third salvo.

"Maybe. Depends on how good their fire discipline is, and how close we're getting to their positions," Tariq distractedly yelled back. "Not going to know until we get closer!"

Alpha and Bravo Sections fired once more, sending another volley of shells downrange. Tariq grimaced. If the Covenant didn't start showing their ugly mugs, then the company was going to have to take some drastic measures. And Tariq hated drastic measures; somehow, they always ended up with Tariq's tank getting shot at.

Alpha and Bravo launched another salvo in the direction of the city, but this time Tariq barely gave it any heed. At this point, it was becoming increasingly clear that either the Covenant just didn't care about a single company of tanks, or the UNSC just wasn't hitting close enough to the Covenant positions to make them care.

"Probably should have sent the entire battalion across," Tariq muttered to himself. "That probably would have made them freak out."

 _"All gunners, cease fire. All tanks: halt."_

 _"Driver, halt!"_ Noble repeated.

Tariq braced himself as Corona brought the tank to a grinding stop. They sat there, engines idly running, with the rest of the company less than a hundred meters away from the city proper.

"Now what?" Tariq heard Corona ask.

"Now we do something stupid," Tariq miserably replied. "Ten to one we're going to have to go into the city itself."

"But," Corona began, looking startled. "We don't have any infantry support."

"Nope."

"That's a really bad idea."

"No shit."

"But we're still going to do it anyways, aren't we?"

"Well, I'll give you credit kid," Tariq reluctantly announced. "You are definitely faster than some of the retards I've had to deal with in the past."

"Thanks Sergeant Helmand," Corona brightly replied.

"But you still ended up here, so that's not saying much.

"Well, I volunteered Sergeant."

"Somehow, that just makes it so much worse," Tariq muttered to himself.

 _"Quiet you two,"_ Noble snapped. _"We're getting our orders. Go ahead 06."_

 _"07, we're pushing into the city."_

Tariq started to groan, but before he could, Lightfoot continued.

 _"Alpha and Bravo Sections will push onto our objective area, see if we can't take anything out,"_ Lightfoot declared, _"but given our lack of infantry support, there's too much of a risk of an ambush. So I want you to take Charlie Section here,"_ a navigation point suddenly appeared at a spot just outside of the city limits on Tariq's HUD, _"and set up defensive positions. You should be able to provide us some limited overwatch, as well as a fallback position for when we pull out."_

 _"Copy that 06,"_ Noble replied.

 _"Let me know when you've established yourselves, over."_

 _"Wilco. 07, out. Driver, move us out!_

"Good lord, it's like a goddamn Christmas miracle: we're not going into the city after all," Tariq announced, not even bothering to hide his relief. "Wonders never cease."

 _"Two thirds of the company still are Sergeant,"_ Noble was quick to remind him. _"Keep your mind focused on the task at hand and let's make sure everyone_ **else** _can make it out alive."_

Tariq sighed, knowing Noble was right. It might not have been his ass hanging out in the wind this time, but that didn't mean he was off the hook just yet. "Understood First Sergeant."

Corona drove the tank in the direction of the nav point and as soon as they came to a halt, Tariq began looking around, checking his sight lines. As far as overwatch positions went, this was perhaps one of the worst ones Tariq had seen in his entire career.

The problem was, while the city of Byzas did sit downhill of the town of Newington, it was a very gentle slope, meaning that even from this far away, Tariq and the rest of Charlie Section wasn't going to be that much in higher in terms of elevation when compared to the rest of the company. That being said, Tariq could see why Lightfoot had chosen this spot as opposed to any other for Charlie Section to set up: due to a gap in the buildings, anyone positioned here would at least be able to see relatively far into the city. As long as Alpha and Bravo didn't deviate from the main roads, Tariq could cover them fairly well up until just before they reached Savvas Circle.

 _"Driver, halt,"_ Noble ordered as 3-1 and 3-3 quickly established positions on either side of Lillian, creating a sort of 'triangle' formation. _"07 to 06: Charlie in position."_

 _"Copy. Alpha and Bravo Sections? Advance!"_

 _"All crew, keep your eyes peeled,"_ Noble ordered as the rest of the tanks began advancing into the city. _"We don't know what the Covies have in store, so let's be prepared for anything."_

"Everyone knows that this is a trap, right?" Tariq noted.

 _"Yeah,"_ Noble bluntly replied.

"Most definitely," Corona murmured.

"Guess the only thing left to do is to wait and see how bad it is," Tariq said to himself as he disabled all the safeties to his weapons. He was going to need them.

 _"All call signs, this is Cataphract Actual. We are entering the city and proceeding onwards to the objective area, over."_

 _"Copy."_

 _"07? Any sign of movement?"_

Tariq could hear Noble click her mic on. _"Negative."_

 _"Understood. Cataphract 1 and 2 pushing past checkpoint one at this time, over."_

Tariq watched with bated breath as Alpha and Bravo rolled down the street. At the moment, they were sticking to the main roads which had been cleared of snow and civilians vehicles, allowing the tanks to advance down the street abreast of each other, as opposed to in a single column, thus greatly decreasing the chance of a catastrophic ambush. Unfortunately, they would not be able to advance the entire way in that fashion as they would eventually have to turn down one of the side streets.

 _"This Cataphract Actual, we are now advancing past checkpoint two."_

Tariq made sure to keep an eye on all the buildings that lined the streets. The greatest danger unsupported tanks faced while operating inside an urban environment wasn't other tanks, but light infantry armed with rocket launchers, grenades, satchel charges, and other such explosive types of weaponry. Due to the enclosed nature of a city, as well as the three-dimensional element, attacks could come from any direction: the flanks, from behind, or even from above.

 _"This is Cataphract: we are now moving past checkpoint three."_

The problem was, inside a city, there were windows _everywhere_. It was something people generally didn't notice until they were looking for one in particular, at which point they realized a city the size of Byzas was practically ninety percent all windows. It was rather intimidating, actually, and one of the reasons why any soldier worth his salt hated urban combat, even when on the defensive. There were just too many factors to consider, too many places to get ambushed from, to allow anyone to be at ease inside a city that was under siege.

 _"This is Cataphract: we are now turning past checkpoint four."_

Tariq hurriedly reached up to bang on the turret roof.

"Hey First Sergeant! Let the Captain know I can't see him anymore once he makes that turn!" Tariq warned and, over the radio, he could hear Noble saying just that.

 _"Understood 07,"_ came Lightfoot's reply. _"Bravo Section: halt. Set up on this intersection here to provide cover. Alpha Section: proceed onward to the objective area, over."_

 _"Copy. Bravo Section, moving out."_

Tariq anxiously began tapping his foot against the ground as he grabbed the controls to his turret. If the Covenant were going to spring their trap, now would be the time they would do it.

 _"Cataphract Actual moving into Savvas Circle now. And... negative contact."_

Tariq sighed. Of course there wasn't. Why would the Covenant had stayed there, especially if they knew the UNSC was coming?

 _"All call signs, Cataphract. There is zero presence of any Covenant forces within Savvas Circle. I_ **am** _picking up signs that there may have been Covenant here at one point, but at the moment, there is no, I say again,_ **no** _Covenant presence located within or around Savvas Circle."_

"Goddamn artillery pieces must have shifted north," Tariq suggested. "Probably why they stopped shooting at us in the first place."

"Does this mean this entire mission was one giant waste of time?" Corona asked.

 _"Not really,"_ Noble replied before Tariq could. _"Our problem was: we didn't know anything about what was going on in this part of the city. Now we know the Covenant don't have forces stationed here, suggesting they don't have enough troops to defend the territory they've grabbed. That also means, without any resistance, the Army could push up some units, recapture this part of the city, and establish a good launching point for when the rest of the XXX Infantry Corps comes up from the south, at which point we can move in with enough armor to completely crush the Covenant's landing site."_

"That's only if you're the optimistic type," Tariq started to say, but before he could finish, Lightfoot spoke up again.

 _"Hang on. We're picking up something. Can't tell what it is from here though..."_

Lightfoot trailed off and for a moment, the line was silent. But then he suddenly sighed and when he spoke again, Tariq could hear the obvious reluctance in his voice. _"Cataphract Actual is dismounting."_

That made Tariq shut up and sit up straight. Historically speaking, tankers suffered the most casualties when they were out of their tanks. As tankers were expected to normally be surrounded by several centimeters worth of composite armor, tankers generally did not have the equipment, nor the training, to be walking around like a damn crunchie. Tariq knew Lightfoot knew that, so for Lightfoot to voluntarily leave his tank, especially in an unsecured environment, well, either Lightfoot was really hoping to score some brownie points with the battalion commander or whatever he saw was damn important.

 _"Thor, keep the engine running in case we need to make a quick escape,"_ Lightfoot was saying. _"Broman, keep your eyes on that building over there. I'll be right back. Actual is dismounting now."_

Tariq could hear Lightfoot grunt as he leapt from the top of his tank and landed on the ground.

 _"No movement,"_ Lightfoot reported, sounding out of breath. _"Moving to object now."_

The sound of Lightfoot's breathing filled Tariq's headset. Either Lightfoot's radio was stuck on transmit, or Lightfoot was deliberately transmitting his every word across the company's dedicated channel.

 _"Approaching object. Not seeing any wires or pressure plates or anything that would suggest a booby trap. I think it's safe to get closer."_

Tariq waited with bated breath for something to happen. The problem was, Tariq had no eyes on the situation. He could only rely on Lightfoot's commentary to gain some insight as to what was going on. But Lightfoot was no narrator and plus, he was too distracted, by obvious reasons, to actually be able to sit down and describe what was happening. Hell, Tariq didn't even know what Lightfoot was even looking at, and it made the situation that much more tense as his mind was swirling with possibilities.

 _"Okay, I'm right over the object."_

Lightfoot's voice cut right through Tariq's thoughts and he quickly started paying attention again.

 _"Damn,"_ Lightfoot breathed. _"Still can't tell what this is. I'm, uh, I'm going to pick it up."_

Tariq felt like facepalming. That was the last thing Lightfoot should do as that was the most obvious method of booby trapping things. He wanted to scream and shout at Lightfoot not to do it, but unfortunately with Lightfoot on transmit, the entire channel was jammed up.

 _"Picking it up..."_

Tariq cringed, and waited for the explosion.

Seconds ticked by, but nothing happened. There was no explosion, no screaming of pain from Lightfoot, nor had his mic turned off yet. There was absolutely no indication as to whether Lightfoot was still alive or not until -

 _"Hey Broman,"_ Lightfoot suddenly said, sounding confused. _"What the hell does this look like to you?"_

Tariq let out a sigh of relief. Somehow, despite all odds, Lightfoot had managed to not only survive, but from the sounds of it, he hadn't even been in any danger to begin with.

 _ **KABOOM!**_

"Son of a bitch!" Tariq yelped as he grabbed his controls and panned the turret around. In the distance, he could see the smoke arising from the explosion, but much to his surprise, it wasn't coming from Alpha's position, but _**Bravo's**_.

Lightfoot's radio abruptly clicked off, but almost immediately the radio waves became flooded with calls.

 _"Contact, CONTACT!"_

 _"Does anyone have eyes on!? Where the fuck did that come from!?"_

 _"Shit, XO's tank is down! Cataphract 05 is DOWN!"_

 _"Where the fuck did that come from!?"_

 _"Shit, did you see that? They're coming from underground!"_

 _"Hit that fucking building!"_

The sound of cannon fire began echoing in the distance, with no eyes on Bravo's position, Tariq had no targets, no idea what was going on, and no way to help.

 _"Look out!"_

 _"Back up back up back up!"_

 _"Somebody grab him! Somebody grab him!_

 _"Lieutenant! Get on!"_

 _"Fall back! Fall back!"_

More cannon fire rang out but this time, Tariq could see flashes of multicolored light: Covenant return fire.

"Shit. First Sergeant, I'm seeing plasma discharge. Bravo's been engaged!" Tariq reported.

 _"God dammit,"_ Noble snapped. _"Cataphract 07 to any Bravo Section victor, I have got no eyes on your pos. What is your status, over?"_

 _"Fuck fuck! How many of them are there!?"_

Tariq could hear Noble snarling.

 _"Cataphract 1-1 Actual, this is 07,"_ she snapped. _"What is your situation, over?"_

 _"Situation is we're fucked!"_ came the immediate reply. _"I've got Drones coming out of the goddamn ground!"_

 _"What!? How?"_ Tariq heard Noble ask. _"Fucking sewer system isn't big enough for Drones to sneak through._

A flash of insight suddenly struck Tariq, and he hastily pulled up a map on his TACPAD to confirm.

"Goddamn subway system runs under about where Bravo is located!" Tariq yelled in realization, and he could hear Corona gasping in surprise. In the meantime though, 1-1 had continued his report.

 _"05 is down, hard. Fucking Drones managed to sneak under his tank and plant some sort of shaped charge on the base, blew the fucking vehicle to hell. 05 driver and gunner are both KIA. XO managed to make it out, but he's in bad shape! Working on trying to extract him now, break! 2-3, secure our exit! 1-2 and 1-4, cover us, we're going to see if we can't go grab the XO, over!"_

 _"1-4 to 1-1, that building to our ten is crawling with fucking bad guys! They got top cover over us... we can't risk moving ahead with them in the way! We need to take that building out, over!"_

 _"Copy! 1-1 to 07, requesting immediate fire support at this location!"_

A navigation point appeared on Tariq's HUD.

 _"Copy! Stand by to spot the fall of our rounds, break! Gunner, indirect fire! Load up HEAT, set fuses to delayed detonation. On my command!"_

Tariq rapidly punched a series of buttons on his targeting computer. While tank guns generally fired at too high of a velocity to make for effective howitzers, in a pinch, they could be used as such and as a result, all tank computers were equipped with software designed to aid in indirect fire missions.

"Gun up!"

 _"FIRE!"_

"On the way!"

Lillian shook as Tariq fired one of her cannons.

 _"1-1: shot, over."_

 _"Shot, out! Uh, drop two five, left... one seven!"_

 _"Down twenty five, left seventeen,"_ Noble repeated as Tariq adjusted. _"Fire when ready!"_

"On the way!"

 _"07: drop one zero, left five!"_

 _"Adjust fire: drop ten, left five!"_ Noble roared.

"Up!" Tariq yelled as soon as his status light turned green.

 _"Fire!"_

"On the way!"

Lillian recoiled again, and Tariq hastily reloaded as he waited.

 _"On target! Fire for effect, FIRE FOR EFFECT!"_

 _"Gunner, give me that targeting data so I can transmit them to 3-1 and 3-3, then you are free to engage!"_

"Understood! Data sent, firing main cannon!"

Tariq pulled the trigger, firing both barrels in rapid succession. As soon as his guns reload, he fired again. Around him, both 3-1 and 3-3 were also opening up, and eventually Tariq began to see a large cloud of dust rising from about where he suspected his shells were hitting.

In the meantime, on a different channel, Tariq could hear Lightfoot saying, _"Longbow, mark that as fire concentration Kilo Six and fire for effect, break! 06 to all Alpha Section victors, fall back to checkpoint four and standby to provide covering fire for Bravo, break! Bravo, give me a sitrep on the XO, over!"_

 _"We managed to recover him sir!"_ came the immediate response. _"But he's in bad shape! He needs immediate medevac! How copy, over?"_

 _"Bravo, break contact, envelope right, and fall back to checkpoint four! Alpha will provide cover! 1-1, take all casualties and pull back directly to checkpoint one, break. 07, push up and standby to collect those casualties from 1-1, then medevac them out of here! Over!"_

 _"Understood! 07, moving out! Gunner, cease fire! Driver, get us to checkpoint one, ASAP!"_

"I'm on my way First Sergeant!" Corona yelled back and Tariq could hear him throw Lillian into gear. Tariq hurriedly moved his hand away from the trigger as the tank lurched forward and headed for the city.

No longer was this area of the city quiet: the sound of machine gun, plasma, and cannon fire echoed through the streets while artillery could be heard whistling overhead.

In front of them, Tariq could see a lone tank back down straight down the street towards them and as they got closer, Tariq could see the company's executive officer, barely burned and looking half alive, sprawled across the top of 1-1's left rear sponson, just barely clinging on.

1-1 suddenly backed up into a corner of a building, and Tariq let out a gasp of horror as the impact caused the XO to accidently roll off the tank.

 _"1-1, stop, STOP!"_ Noble instantly roared over the radio. With the entire tank buttoned up, there was no way they would be able to see the XO, especially at that angle. Thankfully 1-1 stopped before they could accidently back up over the XO.

 _"Come on Lieutenant, get up. Get up!"_ Noble urged.

They watched as the XO stagger upright and start to limp over to Lillian, but his injuries were clearly too much for him as he was only able to take three steps before collapsing.

 _"Shit, I got to go get him!"_ Noble said and Tariq could hear her disconnecting her headset before he spotted her through his sights, dashing through the snow towards the XO. She ran up to him, threw one of his arms around her shoulder, and together the two of them began staggering back towards Lillian.

"Come on," Tariq whispered as the sound of fighting could be hear drawing nearer, and he could hear Lightfoot over the radio indicating the company was in the middle of falling back. "Hurry up First Sergeant!"

Something slipped off of the XO's shoulders and landed on the ground, but neither he nor Noble seemed to notice. At first, Tariq thought it was the XO's sidearm, but then he realized it was too thick to be that. Zooming in, he abruptly realized what it was.

"The goddamn target locator," he gasped before hitting his talk button. "First Sergeant, you guys dropped the target locator! It's on the ground behind you!"

Unfortunately, Noble didn't seem to be paying attention, and Tariq's mind was a whirlwind of thoughts. That target locator was directly tied in with their navy support, and there was no way the Covenant could be allowed to capture it. While the target locator did have some security measures designed to prevent the enemy from being able to use the device, Tariq had no idea if the XO had been able to implement them before he had been injured. And with Noble seemingly too distracted to have noticed, plus the device's close proximity to both 1-1 and Noble meant Tariq couldn't try and use any of weapons to disable it from afar, that meant there was only one thing Tariq could do about it...

"I have to get out there," he said, feeling a sinking sensation in his stomach.

"What? You can't go out there," Corona exclaimed. "You're the gunner!"

"I don't have a choice!" Tariq yelled back as he grabbed his SMG. "Keep the tank running: I'll be back!"

Before Corona could protest, Tariq was up and out of the tank. As soon as his feet touched the ground, Tariq took off running so he didn't have to think about what he was doing and how stupid it was, least he lost his courage.

Dashing past a very startled Noble, Tariq ran right up to the target locator and scooped it up. As soon as he touched it, the screen lit up, indicating that the XO had _not_ been able to lock the device before he had been wounded.

Tariq couldn't help but sigh in relief. That meant this run hadn't been entirely pointless.

Tossing the target locator back onto the ground, Tariq lifted his SMG and prepared to blast it at point blank range but before he could -

 _FWOOZFWOOZ!_

\- two bright green plasma bolts soared right past his shoulder. Instinctively, Tariq dove for the ground before looking to see where the shots had come from. At first, he didn't seem them, but then movement caught his eye: a series of Covenant Drones were pouring out from a nearby building.

"Ah, crap!" Tariq yelped as he leveled his SMG and opened fire.

His initial burst caught one of the Drones head-on before the insect-like alien could take off, causing the Drone to explode and sending the rest of them scattering for cover.

Taking aim at another, Tariq let it rip, but this time he wasn't as lucky and his burst completely missed. Tariq swore. If he survived this, he was so going to visit the range more often: his aim was just terrible.

The Drones began returning fire, and Tariq scooped up the target locator and dashed for cover behind 1-1. With this many Drones, there was no way he could take them all, even if he was some sort of expert marksman. Nor could he retreat back to his tank; looking back, both Noble and the XO had managed to make it safety back inside Lillian before the Drones had appeared, but if Tariq were to try, he'd be cut down before he could make it halfway.

"Fuck, I knew this was a bad idea!" Tariq yelled at himself as he reached for the infantry phone mounted on the back of 1-1's tank. "Lieutenant Buckley? This is Sergeant Helmand! Can you hear me?"

 _"Helmand!? What the fuck are you doing out here? Shouldn't you be in your tank!?"_

"It's a long story!" Tariq yelled back. "But you got enemy foot mobiles, on your six!"

 _"What!? Shit! Gunner, contacts on our six!"_

Tariq could see 1-1's turret panning around.

 _"Hit that fucking building!"_

 _ **VOOOMP!**_

"Ah shit!" Tariq yelped as 1-1 fired both barrels of his main cannon, destroying the building the Drones were coming from, and nearly giving Tariq a heart attack. He always forgot how loud these 120mm cannons were when he wasn't behind a bunch of composite armor.

Forcing himself to ignore the pain, Tariq leveled his SMG as 1-1 followed up with a couple of burst from their coax. 1-1's rounds cut through the Drones like they were made of paper, but some of the Drones were able to evade. Aiming his SMG at one that managed to escape, Tariq fired.

 _PATATATATA!_

His SMG, sounding so pitiful, especially in comparison to the main cannons of his tank, nevertheless was able to catch the Drone midair, sending it crashing to the ground.

 _PATATA! PATATA! PATA - click_

"Come on baby," Tariq muttered to himself as he frantically ripped out the empty magazine and tossed it aside. Reaching into his vest, he pulled out a fresh mag and, after ensure he was inserting it with the correct side up, smacked it into place.

 _"Helmand? Do you copy?"_

Tariq scrambled for his radio at the sound of Noble's voice. "Helmand here!"

 _"Sergeant, I don't know what the hell you were doing out of the tank, but I trust you had a good reason. Unfortunately, I'm getting a direct order from Actual to fall back, so I can't come pick you up. You're going to have to hitch a ride with 1-1."_

"Shit," Tariq muttered, glancing around. At least all the Drones seemed to have been dealt with for now. "Copy that First Sergeant."

Slinging his SMG over his shoulder, Tariq scrambled to the top of 1-1, where he encountered 1-1's tank commander, 1st Lieutenant Buckley, with the upper half of his body sticking out from the hatch.

"What the hell are you doing here Helmand!?"

"I came to recover this!" Tariq showed him the target locator.

"Fuck! Is it locked?"

"No sir! Need to destroy it so the Covies can't get their hands on it. I'm thinking you could back up over it!"

"If it's unlocked, we could use it right now!" Buckley pointed out. "We need some covering fire so that the Captain and the rest of my platoon can get out because we've got fucking Drones pouring out from the fucking ground and all sorts of infantry coming out of the woodwork!"

"Alright, copy that sir!" Tariq reluctantly replied.

"Hold on to something Sergeant! Driver, forward!"

Tariq grabbed the edge of the turret as the tank lurched forward a block and stopped in the middle of the street.

"Sergeant, you see that building!"

"Yes sir!"

"Most of the Drones were pouring out from there! I want it gone!"

"Yes sir!"

Leveling the target locator, Tariq held the trigger. The words "TARGETING..." appeared in bright yellow words on the screen before it changed to a red "MISSILES INCOMING!" and a red holographic circle appeared over the building in question.

"Lieutenant: INCOMING!"

There was no warning. As the missiles were traveling faster than the speed of sound, Tariq had no way to see or hear the missiles before they hit. One moment everything seemed fine, the next, there was a flash of light, and then a shockwave that went rippling through the streets.

 _ **WOOMP!**_

His ears plugs had sealed themselves the moment the Pilums had exploded, filling Tariq's ears with white noise, but he could still feel the reverberation from the explosions on his body. He looked up to see the front half of the building was gone, replaced by a massive crater.

"Target destroyed, new target!" Buckley bellowed. "Follow my tracers!"

Buckley fired his heavy machine gun, and Tariq hurriedly aimed the target locator at the place the rounds were hitting. The locator let out a chime and the words "MISSILES INCOMING!" flashed across his screen once more.

 _ **WOOMP!**_

Another missile exploded, and Tariq was forced to duck as 1-1 was pelted with debris despite being a couple hundred meters away from the impact area, as well behind several large buildings. Such was the explosive power inside those cruise missiles.

Tariq turned to Buckley for another target, but Buckley at the moment was being distracted by his radio.

"Copy that 06!" he yelled. "Hey! They're still taking fire from that first building! Hit it again Sergeant!"

Tariq nodded and leveled the locator once more. This time Tariq was just barely able to catch sight of a blurry objective passing through the air just before impact.

 _ **WOOMP!**_

All sorts of dust, debris, even a few smaller cars were picked up and hurtled away by the blast. A loud, inhuman groaning filled the air, sounding very much to Tariq like one of the gods of old was finally waking up after a millennium of slumber, and he looked up to see the building the missiles had struck was visibly swaying before it abruptly collapsed.

"Yeah! Take that you fuckers!" Buckley cheered. "That ought to give us enough cover to fall back! Driver, reverse! We're falling back to the MLR! Helmand, hang onto something!"

1-1 began rapidly reversing down the street and out of the city, all the while laying down heavy amounts of fire. Overhead, plasma mortars and artillery shells were being exchanged at a frantic pace as the entire city came alive with Covenant activity once more. Clearly, Cataphract Company's recon by fire mission had succeeded. With any luck, the pressure the Covenant were applying to UNSC forces up north would subside long enough for the Marines to regain their footing, thus putting another nail in the Covenant's dreams for an easy victory.

For Tariq however, clinging onto the side of 1-1's turret and doing the best he could to not fall off, all he could think of was: 'Great.'

'Here we go again.'

* * *

1\. Bisons are canon vehicles, which made their first appearance in _Halo Wars 2_. I've never played the game, and it's a little hard to tell from the pictures on Halopedia, but I think it's supposed to be a 6x6 wheeled vehicle. At any case, for the purpose of this story, I'm treating them as a Halo version of the various wheeled armored vehicles in use by real-world militaries today (BTR, Stryker, LAV, AMV, Piranha, etc.)

2\. SIGINT: abbreviation for "Signal Intelligence." Basically, as the name implies, it's the gathering of intelligence via the interception of signals. The cracking of the Nazi enigma machine during WW2, would be an example of SIGINT at work.

3\. The name _Serenity_ was suggested by one of my reviewers, Broman, back in chapter 16. I'm pretty sure he wanted me to name a _space_ ship Serenity, but I couldn't figure out a way to fit it in, so this was the next best thing. I hope he doesn't mind…

Author's Note

So, as you guys can see, this chapter sort of reintroduces an idea that I had first had back in _Missing in Action_ , and it's something that I was trying to reintroduce into this story earlier, but found I just couldn't make it fit: the ANS _Serenity_ of the Actium Colonial Navy. Like I said, this idea of a "blue-water" Actium Colonial Navy has been around since chapter 4 of _MIA_ (the museum was destroyed by submarines of the Actium Navy,) but I never really explained what the Actium Navy _was_.

A quick explanation of terms: a "blue-water" navy is simply navy capable of independent operations in open oceans. Pretty much most of the world's navies are "blue-water" navy. Notable examples include: the US Navy, the Royal Navy (UK,) and some historic ones like the Imperial Japanese Navy. "Blue-water" is used to differentiate from "brown-water" navies, which are navies that operate solely on rivers and basically "landlocked" bodies of water, and "green-water" navies which are navies that operate close to shore.

A bit of background. First off, the introduction of a blue-water navy was originally just because such a thing already exist in Halo canon. In _Halo 3_ , there's mention of an aircraft carrier that was part of Earth's "blue-water" navy and because of that, when writing chapter 4, I just threw it in because it was something different. I didn't really think much about it, and it wasn't until one of my readers of that story left a review questioning the point of the submarines did I really sit down and think about what sort of role such a force would play in the Halo universe (or at least, my version of the Halo universe.)

One of the things to keep in mind when designing a military force is: what threats are they expecting to face? Militaries exist for a specific reason, and the threats they expect to face will dictate not only their doctrine, but also the type of equipment they acquire.

At first glance, the idea of having blue-water navies in the Halo universe doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Historically, real-world navies were used for several reasons, one of which was the defense of their coastlines, because that's where most of the threats would have come from. But in the Halo universe, there really won't be much of a threat coming from the ocean. The Covenant obviously attack from orbit, which means they aren't confined to amphibious assaults and can land pretty much wherever they want, whereas I imagine any Insurrectionist group (if they had the money, resources, and manpower,) would rather build spaceships as spaceships are much more versatile than ocean-going vessels simply because they can actually go into space.

Yet, at the same time, not having assets dedicated to traveling the ocean would be a waste as that meant much of the planet would be unusable. (Obviously, this only really applies to planets that are covered in large amounts of water, like Earth and in my headcanon, Actium because as stated back in chapter 8, sixty-four percent of Actium's surface is water.) So, I'm thinking some colonial governments (not all) would devote resources to constructing a blue-water navy. And as most threats would be coming from above, and not on the surface, I would imagine the role of said navy would be the defense of the colony from threats in orbit. Which would mean the vast majority of vessels would be equipped with missiles capable of reaching high orbit, similar to how I would imagine there would be land based batteries capable of accomplishing the same thing.

Of course, a ship sitting in the middle of the ocean all by itself would make it an extremely vulnerable target for aircraft, as we've seen multiple times throughout history. Usually the defense for that is to have escorts, better sensors, and more anti-aircraft weaponry. But I think in the Halo universe, the best defense against attacks from orbit would be to use the ocean itself as a shield. Therefore, I imagine the vast majority of a colonial navy's defensive power would come from "missile submarines" that would be capable of staying underwater for weeks upon time while still being able to accomplish their mission. Similar to how the real world submarines of the NATO and Russian navies work, only more extreme because with Halo technology, having underwater bases that could serve as resupply and refueling points (even dry-docks) would mean the only time a submarine would ever need to surface would be to give their crew shore leave (and even then, underwater bases might mean they wouldn't have to do that.)

Of course, oceans aren't foolproof. There are obviously ways to counter submarines such as depth charges, sonar, sonobuoys, magnetic detectors, most of which are deployed utilizing aircraft, so as part of the defensive package for submarines, colonial navies would also utilize a surface fleet primarily made up of dedicated anti-aircraft destroyers and frigates. Most navies probably wouldn't develop any ships larger than that, as it would just be too big of a target and require too many resources to build and man, not just in physical materials, but also money and manpower. So, no cruisers, battleships, dreadnoughts, or battlecruisers. There would still be carriers, but unlike modern navies, they wouldn't be the focus of the fleet, and would be used more as mobile airfields for aerocraft capable of space flight (like Broadswords, Pelicans, or Wombats) that could be used to augment the fleets of both the UNSC Navy and Air Force.

Now, I know what you guys are thinking. Having submarines capable of engaging spaceships in orbit? Isn't that the point of having stuff like orbital defense platforms and spaceships of your own? Wouldn't they be far better assets to have than ships confined to a certain environment? Well, you're right in that ensuring a high concentration of orbital assets would be a far better use of limited resources than a blue-water navy would be. However, as shown in canon, ships can be destroyed and ODPs aren't infallible. And if those orbital assets were to fall, then I feel it would be beneficial to at least have some way to contest the enemy's control of orbit, so at the very least, you can force your opponent into deciding whether it's worth going for that quick and easy victory by having their warships swoop in and burn everything from orbit at the potential cost of taking heavy damage or even losing some of said warships to surface fire. Or to settle for the long grind by deploying smaller, cheaper assets (like fighters and ground troops) first and engaging in a long and bloody ground battle (ground in the sense you're fighting within the atmosphere, not necessarily being physically on the ground itself) to secure the area before deploying their warships.

As history has shown, a layered defense is the best type of defense, _if you've got the resources for that sort of thing_ (important caveat here.)

Now, readers may have noticed how vague I was throughout that entire spiel, using phrases like "I would imagine" or "I think." That's because (and I'll be honest here) I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I'm sure some of my readers _cough_ _Thorthemighty321_ _cough_ are reading this right now and going "well, _that_ was all wrong," so I'd love to hear your guys' thoughts. This is not the best venue for a discussion like this, so I'm not actually expecting any response (if I even get any) but whatever you guys have to offer is appreciated.


	26. Chapter 26

**Chapter 26**

 **Byzas, Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
1524**

 **Selene**

 _"RIDDLE, LOOK OUT!"_

 _Selene glanced over her shoulder to see a stream of radioactive green fire headed her way._

 _And then everything went dark._

 _The next thing she knew, she was being dragged against the ground._

 _"FALL BACK, FALL BACK! ALL UNITS, FALL BACK!" someone was shouting in the background._

 _"Hang on Selene! Just hang on!" someone else yelled. Was that Kingsley's voice?_

 _"Oh shit! On your left!"_

 _She felt hot brass beginning to pelt her body, but for some reason, the roar of the gunfire seemed to be coming from far away. The world began to spin before her very eyes before everything went dark once more._

 _Selene cracked open her eyes._

 _Her head was bobbing up and down, like she was on a boat, but she couldn't smell any water. It took her addled brain more than a few seconds to realize what was going on: she was on someone's back. And that someone was running._

 _"You know, you'd probably run a lot faster if you just ditched her," someone was saying. Was that Shin's voice?_

 _"I'M NOT LEAVING HER!" someone else yelled. That was definitely Kingsley._

 _"Then you need to find a way to pick up the pace: we're getting let behind!"_

 _"I DIDN'T ASK YOU TO STAY WITH ME!"_

 _"Yeah I - BEHIND YOU!"_

 _Selene suddenly felt herself falling before she abruptly hit the ground. Gunfire began ringing out above her, followed by the bone chilling roar of a Covenant Elite, which in turn was followed by more gunfire. She could hear the shuffling of feet, yelling, someone screaming in pain in the background, but she couldn't tell what was going on. It was all too -_

Selene woke up, feeling groggy as hell, like that time, back in high school, she had been confined to her bed due to a bad bout of mono. She didn't know where she was or what was going on. She heard what sounded like someone gagging in the background, but it ended before she could figure out what it was, so Selene instead focused on trying to find some answers. She had enough presence of mind to realize she was not currently lying in bed inside her probably-more-expensive-than-it-was-worth apartment, with her pet cat, Fig Mewton, curled up next to her, but aside from that, she couldn't figure anything else out. Which then begged the question: where in the heck was she?

Doing her best to shove away her exhaustion, Selene forced herself to sit up. The world started spinning, and she sat there for a moment, waiting for it to stop, before finally taking a look around. She was sitting on some hardwood floor, in some room she had never seen before, and dressed like she was ready to go on patrol. There were no windows to the room, only a single door in or out, but at least the lights were on. She could hear what sounded like thunder in the distance, but with no windows, she had no way of telling where it came from.

"Well. You _are_ alive after all."

Selene couldn't help but jump at the unexpected voice. She whirled around, nearly collapsing because of how dizzy that made her, to see a vaguely familiar looking Oriental man sitting on what appeared to be an overturned trash can in the far corner, just staring at her. He was wearing what she recognized as a UNSC military uniform, but oddly enough, he was also wearing a standard issued BPD class IIIA ballistic vest, complete with the word "police" in white letters strewn across the front.

She frowned.

"Officer Selene Riddle: do you recognize me?" the man asked and Selene shook her head. "Take your time. It'll come to you. Getting knocked unconscious sometimes affects your short term memory."

Selene's frown deepened. Clearly the man knew her, which meant she should recognize him, but for some reason she just couldn't -

"Shin. Your name is Shin," Selene suddenly remembered.

Shin grinned and nodded. "Yep. You remember what happened?"

At once, everything started coming back to her. Jets flying through the air, evacuation procedures, Covenant landings...

"There was a firefight!" Selene exclaimed.

"If that's what you want to call it," Shin dryly commented. "I think I've been in battles that had less fighting than that but sure, we'll go with that."

"What happened?" Selene asked, barely paying attention. "And why do I feel so exhausted?"

"You got knocked out. Falling debris or something like that, I'm not sure," Shin patiently explained. "As to why you're exhausted, well..."

He jerked his head in the direction of the door and reflexively, she turned to see what he was looking at. Abruptly, she felt a prick on her arm.

"Ow! What the -"

She turned to see Shin had unexpectedly jabbed her in the arm with a needle. She stared at him in shock.

"What are you...?"

At once, adrenaline began surging through her veins, like she had just drunk an entire pot's worth of steaming hot espresso. Her heart began racing, beating at like a hundred thousand beats per second as all of her senses seemed to come alive. Selene practically felt like she was about ready to explode, and she found herself gasping for air.

"Feel better?"

"What the hell was that!?" Selene demanded as she started taking deep breaths in an attempt to slow her heart beat down.

Shin shrugged. "Beats me. Found it in some medkit."

"You just injected me with something and you didn't even know what it was!?" Selene exclaimed, outraged. "Do you know how fucking irresponsible that is!? That could have been toxic! Or I could have been, I don't even know, allergic or something!"

"Well, you're yelling at me, so that means you're not dying, nor does it appear that you're going into anaphylactic shock. I'd say you'll be alright," Shin calmly said, infuriating Selene even more.

"How can you be so calm about this - !?" she started to demand, but Shin held up his hand.

"You seemed to be very concerned about the past," he mildly chided. "You should be more concerned about the present. What's done is done. You're not dead, you're not breaking out into hives, so, let's move on. We've got other things to worry about.

As reluctant as Selene was to agree with him, unfortunately she knew Shin was right. There _were_ other things to worry about. Mainly -

"Where are we?"

"City of Byzas."

Selene resisted the urge to throw something at him. "Yes, thank you, but I figured that out already," Selene snapped. "I meant specifically."

Shin shrugged. "Who knows? All the signs are gone and even if they weren't, it wouldn't have helped me very much: this is the first time I've ever set foot in this city. I was stationed aboard the UNSC _Richard Bong_ ," Shin reminded her. "The only reason why I'm here is because my ship was getting resupplied. And the only reason why my ship was here is because Actium was the rallying point for fleets that had been damaged during the Battles of Draco III and Newsaka. All I know is: at the moment, we're somewhere behind enemy lines."

Selene stared at him, shocked.

"Behind enemy lines - !?" she faintly began, but before she could enquire further, she suddenly noticed they weren't the only two people in the room. There was someone else laying in the corner just opposite to them. "Is that - KINGSLEY!"

Staggering upright, Selene dashed over to Kingsley. He looked terrible. Despite his dark skin tones, she could tell he was dangerously pale, nor did he appear to be breathing.

"What's wrong with him!?" Selene demanded to know as she started searching for a pulse, but her hands were far too numb for her to locate one.

"Heart attack, I think," Shin vaguely answered.

"A heart attack - !?" Selene incredulously repeated. "But Kingsley has never had any heart problems!"

Shin shrugged. "Doesn't matter. A Covenant attack of that intensity... well, the adrenaline rush alone is enough to cause some people's hearts to seize up. Your friend is not the first person to die because of something like that, I doubt he'll be the last."

"Die...?" Selene echoed. Tears began welling up in her eyes as she realized the truth: her boss, her coworker, her _friend_ , was dead.

And there was nothing she could do about it.

"Oh god, his kids!" Selene exclaimed.

"What?"

"Kingsley had two kids: Remus and Nymphadora! How am I going to tell them their father is dead?" Selene gasped.

"Well, maybe you don't have to. Don't you cops have someone to go around telling people their families are dead? I know the Air Force does."

Selene glared at him through the tears in her eyes. "Do you not have a heart?" she demanded.

"I do, actually," Shin replied. "And as much as I would like to go around crying and screaming and... kicking at grass like the best of them, I unfortunately also have a practical mind. And that mind is telling me this is neither the time nor place for something like that. We're behind enemy lines Officer Riddle. I don't know if you have the context to be able to grasp what that means, but basically? You should be very scared right now."

Selene bowed her head. As much as she didn't want to admit it, Shin was right. Again. She couldn't afford to fall apart. Not now. Not when Kingsley had already done so much to make sure she had made it to this point.

Kingsley's eyes were already closed, but at the very least Selene could move his arms so they were crisscrossed over his chest. Leaning over, she kissed his forehead and whispered, "I'm sorry Kingsley."

"Why?"

She whirled on Shin, who lifted his hands in a placating gesture.

"I'm just saying: you weren't the one who killed him. Hell, you aren't even the reason he's here. He volunteered for this shit all on his own."

Selene gritted her teeth and shook her head, not wanting to hear anymore of Shin's reasonings. She had only known him for a few hours and yet she was already getting sick and tired of him.

"What's our plan for making it to safety?" she asked instead.

Shin grinned, and gave her a single nod of approval, one that instantly filled Selene with shame. "Now you're talking sense."

He pulled out a small piece of cloth covered in with what appeared to be inane scribbling. As he spread the cloth out on the ground, Selene realized that no, they weren't scribbles, it was just a poorly drawn map of the area.

"You'll have to forgive my chicken scratch," Shin began. "Art was never my strong point. I did some reconnaissance of the general area while I was waiting to see if you'd ever wake up again, and as far as I can tell, we're the only living things within a five block radius. That's the bad news. The worse news is, this is most definitely bad guy country. Covies got combat air patrols all over the place, as well as hunter-killer teams scattered throughout the area. And from what I can tell," Shin looked up, and Selene could see just how grim he looked, "the Covies are deployed in a search pattern: they're looking for something."

Selene felt the blood in her veins run cold. "'Looking for something'. Like, us?"

"Doubt it," Shin replied. "Unless you're someone more important than I realized. But, given that this is the Covenant, I doubt they would object to shooting a couple of lost humans in the face if they so happen to stumble upon them, so, we should probably avoid getting found."

Selene felt faint. "You said that was the 'worse news.' I assume that means there is some good news?"

"There is, actually," Shin brightly said. "Covie patrols finished their search of this grid 'bout ten, fifteen minutes before you woke up which means, I estimate there's about a fifteen minute window where no one is looking in this direction. That's the good news. The better news is: you hear that rumbling in the distance?"

"The thunder?"

Shin shook his head. "Not thunder. Artillery. That's good because that means the battle is still ongoing. If the battle is still ongoing, that means the city, and conversely, the colony, has yet to be lost. That means if we can make it to friendly positions, we can get extracted off this shithole. Unfortunately, that does mean we have to find friendly forces. Preferably one with a working radio."

"But you're in the military," Selene pointed out. "Couldn't we just find a radio, and _you_ call someone to get us out?"

Shin shook his head. "First off, the military doesn't work that way. Second, I don't know any of the local frequencies, encryption codes, authentication sequences, or challenges for any of the units around here. Even if we did find a radio, no one would pick up. Last, well, like I said, unless you're someone important like a senator's daughter or something, even if we could get someone's attention, no one would bother to pick us up."

"Bottom line is," Shin concluded, "if we want to get out of this alive, we're going to have to do it ourselves. Together." He paused. "You with me?"

Selene sighed as the enormity of the task that laid in front of them hit her. She had no choice really. She was so out of her depth here, she wasn't sure she would have made it this far without him. She needed his help.

"What do we do first?"

Shin smile. Somehow, that made him look even creepier than he normally did. "First? We take inventory. We need weapons. Last thing we want to do is get into a pitched firefight against a Covenant patrol, but we should have something to defend ourselves in the event we get compromised. I ran out of ammo about half an hour ago. What do you have?"

"I think I still have my stun gun," Selene started to say as she reached down to her holster, only to feel nothing but air. Her holster was empty. She looked up to see a guilty look appear on Shin's face.

"Yeah... about that..." he awkwardly began. "Apparently Elites don't like it when you shoot them with over a hundred thousand volts of electricity. Found that out the hard way..."

"Okay..." Selene said, sensing a story, but not really wanting to know. She began patting herself down. "Then I guess I'm unarmed t- "

She paused as her hand brushed against a pistol grip of sorts. Reaching into her vest at the small of her back, she found her off-duty piece, her Caveria PX40 pistol. How it got there, she had no idea but as she drew it out, she was surprised to see that it was not only fully intact, but, as she ejected the magazine and checked the chamber, it was also fully loaded.

"Well, that's a start," Shin noted. "Not quite an M6, but at least we're getting somewhere. How'd you manage to hang on to that all this time?"

"I don't know, Kingsley must have made sure I had it, just in case," Selene whispered, awestruck. She bowed her head and whispered a word of thanks to Kingsley for his foresight. "It's completely intact too."

She regarded the pistol in her hand for a few moments, before coming to a decision. Sticking the gun back into her holster, she offered the entire package to Shin.

"You should take this," she reluctantly said. "You're probably a much better shot than I am. And I don't have any reloads so... we need to make sure every shot counts."

Shin glanced at her, then at the pistol, then calmly pushed the weapon back towards her.

"Keep it," he said simply. "It's your gun. Plus, I think you'll need it more than I will."

Selene wasn't sure if she should have been offended by that comment or not, but truth be told, she wasn't all that interested in arguing the point.

Bobbing her head, she stuck the weapon into her belt, feeling infinitely better knowing she was armed. Still, she couldn't help but feel guilty. She was armed, Shin wasn't. She patted herself down once more just in case she had another gun stashed somewhere, but unfortunately all she had left was her Asp.

"Here," she reflexively said, handing the Asp over.

Immediately she felt stupid. Let's see: gun? Or extendable baton? The two weren't even close to being the same caliber of weapons.

Still, Shin didn't seem to mind as he took the Asp without question.

"Thanks," was all he said. "Couldn't hurt."

Selene nodded. "So. What's next?"

"We figure out our escape route." Shin gestured at his map again. "Figured we got to go north. Covies were making landfall due south of us, plus that's the direction all the Cunt Munchers are running in."

"What ever happened to those guys?" Selene asked, looking around but not seeing any uniformed bodies.

Shin waved his hand dismissively. "Probably dead. Who cares? Anyways, key is to avoid detection. Out in the open, Covies have eyes and ears everywhere. Like fucking hawks. With laser guns. I figure our best bet is to do what moles do: go underground."

Selene blinked at the randomness of the analogy, but decided not to comment.

"Our best bet is the subway," Shin continued. "Figure, if this place is like any other city, then there's got to be several hundred klicks worth of tunnels running in all directions directly under the city. One of them is bound to be heading in the right direction."

Selene shivered. The idea of traveling through a dark confined tunnel just didn't sit well with her. She had been down there once, helping Metro PD look for a suspect that had tried to escape using the tunnels. It had been creepy as hell back then, even when she was searching alongside ten other officers and they had a full radio connection back to dispatch; she hate to think what it would be like now, during an alien invasion, with no one but Shin around.

But then again, it's not like she had any better ideas...

"Guess our next step is to find a way into the tunnels, huh?" Selene commented, doing her best to hide her unease. "Like a subway station or something."

"Oh, I already did," Shin triumphantly announced. "Found a subway station _and_ a service entrance." He gestured at his map. "So, there's a subway station about two blocks east of us, and a service entrance about three blocks west of us. Despite being closer though, I'm thinking our best bet is the service entrance."

"Why?"

"Subway station is too open," Shin patiently explained. "Too many angles. Service entrance is a lot more discreet. We'll be able to get in and get out, with no one the wiser."

Selene thought about it for a moment. That... sort of made sense.

"When do we leave?" was all she said though.

"No time like the present. Plus, our window is closing," Shin announced, gathering up the map and tucking it inside his vest before pausing. "Unless... you've got a reason to delay?"

Selene glanced at Kingsley's body. "No," she mutely replied. "No I do not."

"Great! Let's go then," Shin said as he got up, slapping Selene on the arm. "I'll lead, you follow. Do exactly what I do and whatever I tell, when I tell you. Got it?"

Selene nodded.

Without another word, Shin walked over to the door. Pausing at the doorframe, he looked around to see if the coast was clear, before gesturing for Selene to follow. Throwing one last look at Kingsley, Selene left the room.

Once outside, Selene was startled to realize how cold it actually was. There must have been some sort of heater back in that room. Shivering, she was half tempted to walk back inside, but she that wasn't a possibility any longer. She had to press on.

As they swiftly but carefully made their way down the street, Selene took the opportunity to look around. The city was surprisingly more intact than she would have thought, especially given what was going on. That's not to say it was completely untouched: the buildings surrounding the street were showing signs of some serious damage, including broken windows and holes blown into walls. Plus, a large number of debris was clogging the streets and more than once, Selene and Shin found their path partially blocked by wrecked vehicles and craters blown into the pavement. Still, everything was still standing and nothing was on fire. Selene had seen more damage done when a TV news helicopter had accidently crashed into a skyscraper a few years ago.

Furthermore, there weren't any bodies. Obviously, as part of her job, Selene had dealt with her fair share of deceased people. Murders, bad car accidents, fires, even just accidental deaths, Selene had seen it all. Despite that, she never quite got used to seeing the sight of dead people, especially dead children, so she was a little more than grateful there were none now. That being said, she also had to admit it was a little unnerving; the complete lack of life, even recently deceased one, was rather unusual for a city this big and this dense, and made Selene wonder if she and Shin were the only ones still around. If that was the case, then that could be either good or bad: Selene just wasn't sure which one it was just yet.

"Here we are," Shin suddenly announced and startled, Selene looked up. Apparently she had been more distracted than she realized as they had already made it to their destination without her noticing.

They had arrived at what looked like a small concrete shed. There were no windows, only a couple of metal doors. The shed and the doors were completely unmarked, but Selene had seen one of these before and knew it was a service entrance to the subway tunnels below them.

Shin wrenched open one of the doors, revealing a small metal landing and a long flight of stairs going down into the darkness below.

Jamming a piece of brick in between the door and the frame, Shin suddenly turned to Selene.

"Are you ready to enter the lair of the beast?" he unexpectedly asked her in a dark voice, with a slightly unnerving grin on his face.

"That's... really creepy you know," Selene told him.

"Is it? Sorry," Shin replied, not sounding apologetic in the least bit. "Shut the door behind you, will ya?"

Without waiting for a response, he started down the staircase.

Selene shivered. She was starting to think this was a bad idea, following Shin. But then again, what choice did she have? And at the very least, she had a gun and Shin didn't, so if he tried to do anything, well, Selene would be able to defend herself.

Mind made up, she yanked the brick out from the door and followed Shin through and just barely managing to prevent herself from jumping as the door slammed shut behind her.

Inside, it was a lot warmer than she thought it would be. She could feel wind blowing up the staircase shaft and in the distance, she could also hear fans running. The lights were on, indicating the city, at least this part, still had power, which was good as now that Selene thought about it, she didn't have any night vision goggles or even a flashlight, which would have made navigating through the tunnels almost impossible. Maybe if they were really lucky, the maglevs would still be working, and they could ride the rest of the way to safety.

They reached the bottom of the staircase without incident, and Selene watched as Shin force open the doors leading into the tunnels itself. Pausing long enough for Selene to catch up, Shin entered the tunnels and without hesitation, turned left and started walking. Selene automatically followed, but after a few minutes of walking, she started thinking: they were supposed to go north. But how did Shin know which way north was? There weren't any signs.

Speeding up so that she could catch up to Shin, she grabbed his arm.

"Shin, wait a second."

"What's up?" Shin asked as he slowed down but kept walking.

"You said we need to go north, right?" Selene asked as she followed in his wake.

"I did."

"Well, how do we know the direction we're going right now _leads_ north? I haven't seen any signs or any indications that this is the way we want to go. Are we sure we're going the right way?"

"This is the right way," Shin insisted.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

Selene narrowed her eyes. "How?"

She could see Shin shrugging in the dim light. "I just am."

"Shin, _stop!_ "

With an audible sigh, Shin came to a stop and turned around to face Selene.

"Yes?" he asked with obvious strained patience. Not that Selene cared.

"Shin. _How_ do you know this is the right direction?" Selene insistently asked. "These tunnels stretch for kilometers, and if we take the wrong one, it could be hours before we realize. We need to be absolutely sure we're going the right way. So, again I ask: how do you know we're going in the right direction?"

Shin sighed. "Okay. You feel that breeze on your back?"

Selene nodded.

"That's the result of all the circulation fans inside the tunnels. You know, to keep the air moving so everyone traveling through here doesn't die from asphyxiation?"

"What about them?" Selene cautiously asked.

"Well, the fans are always installed so that the air flows from south to north. Ergo, if we feel the wind on our backs, we're going north. It's that simple."

Selene skeptically stared at him. "That sounds... completely wrong. But even if it isn't, how do we know this tunnel isn't going east to west? I presume in tunnels like that, the airflow wouldn't be going south to north?"

Before Shin could respond, all the lights suddenly went off, plunging the entire tunnel into darkness. Selene looked around, startled, but before she could react, someone grabbed her and shoved her against the wall. Reflexively, Selene started to shout, but then someone clapped their hand over her mouth.

"Quiet," Shin whispered into her ear. "Try to keep all noise to a minimum. I'm going to let you go. Are you going to shout and scream if I do?"

Picking up on Shin's alarmed state, Selene did her best to remain calm. As best as she could, she shook her head.

"Good."

Shin removed his hand.

"What's going on?" Selene whispered as quietly as she could, but even then, it still sounded way too loud to her ears in the now dead silent tunnels.

"I'm not sure," Shin admitted. "But that's the problem. Could be a power failure. But then again, it could also be... something else..."

He trailed off, but Selene could easily figure out what the other possibility was. It could be the Covenant. And if it was, that would be a huge problem.

"Keep one hand on the back of my vest, and the other on the wall to help you navigate," Shin commanded. "Try to move as fast as you can, but not so fast you'll fall over and make a lot of noise."

Reflexively nodding her head, even though Shin wouldn't be able to see it, Selene did as she was told. She realized her heart was racing, and she sounded like she was close to hyperventilating, and she did her best to calm down. Unfortunately, it wasn't easy. She had forgotten how dark these tunnels could get with all the lights off, and the thought of stumbling across a Covenant patrol in these conditions was making her panic.

Still, Selene forced herself to take a deep breath and calm down. There was no use panicking over something that hadn't happened yet.

"You ready?" she heard Shin ask and in lieu of a verbal response, she tugged his vest. "Good. Let's move it out, nice and slow."

They shuffled down the tunnel, all the while, Selene did her best to keep her growing fears at bay. As a cop, people were always asking her how she stopped herself from being scared when she was on patrol alone at night, or about to approach a potentially hostile crime scene. Truth be told, there was no secret technique to _not_ being scared. Fear was a human instinct. It was a raw, primal feeling that everyone, to the smallest of children to the largest of soldiers felt. To be scared was to be human.

There were, however, techniques to _minimize_ one's fear, the key of which was to simply stay calm. By remaining calm, a person was able to think things through in a rational manner, and then act accordingly. A lot of times, people's fears were simply the result of their overactive imaginations, and once they were thinking clearly, they would realize things weren't necessarily as bad as they had thought.

Of course, staying calm was a challenge in and of itself. For Selene, her normal technique was to constantly remind herself that she was a professional, and that the situation she was about to enter in, there would potentially be someone there who was probably even _more_ scared than she was. And that, if Selene couldn't stay calm for herself, she could at least stay calm for _that_ person.

Unfortunately, none of that was working for her at the moment. In this alien invasion situation, Selene was very much out of her depth. Secondly, Selene herself was potentially the victim here, only, there wasn't going to be anyone around to save _her_. The only saving grace she had was Shin who, much to her immense jealousy, did not seem bothered in the least bit by the situation they found themselves in. In fact, and it was obviously hard to tell because it was so dark, but Selene almost got the feeling that Shin was _enjoying_ himself.

Without warning, Selene heard the echo of something thumping in the very far distance.

"What was that?" she couldn't help but ask.

"Not sure," came Shin's calm reply. "Almost sounded like gunfire."

Selene stared at the dark spot where she knew Shin's head to be. "Should we be able to hear the fighting that's taking place above ground?"

"Nope."

"But then... that would mean..."

"There's fighting taking place inside these tunnels?" Shin finished. "Yep. That also means: there are Covenant inside these tunnels. So... the best thing you could do right now is… you know… shut up."

Selene got the hint. She shut her mouth so quickly, it actually hurt her jaw.

They continued to make their way down the tunnel as more and more gunfire could be heard reverberating in the distance. Selene wondered what was going on, and if there was any way they would be able to avoid the fighting. However, the problem was, given the acoustics of these tunnels, it was next to impossible to figure out which direction the fighting was taking place, much less how far away it was. One thing Selene remembered from the last time she was down here, was just how _far_ sound traveled. One of the only ways they had been finally able to catch the suspect they had been looking for, was because he had had a negligent discharge, and the reverberation from the gunshot had allowed dispatch and the city Superintendent to triangulate his position almost instantly.

The gunfire continued, unabated, for several minutes, but as time went on, Selene's ears began to pick up on something else. It almost sounded like... wings?

Without warning, Shin abruptly grabbed her and threw her onto the ground, causing Selene to let out a squeak in alarm, as the adrenaline in her veins abruptly spiked.

As she laid there on the ground, doing her best to calm herself down once more, Selene couldn't help but feel a stab of irritation.

"You really need to stop doing that," Selene hissed, but then Shin put his finger on her lips. Selene immediately stopped talking, and Shin moved his hand away, but before she could do anything, Shin immediately replaced it, before moving it away once more.

At first Selene was confused, as she wasn't making any noises. But when Shin repeated the gesture once more, she suddenly realized what he was doing: he was pointing at something.

Grabbed a hold of his hand before he could repeat the motion, she allowed him to dragged her hand until it was extended out in front of her, and she realized there was something in front of them Shin wanted her to see. She stared into the darkness, squinting, as if that would magically grant her the ability to see in the dark. There didn't seem anything out of place in the tunnels in front of them -

\- aside from the small glowing green ball of light floating in mid-air of course.

That gave Selene pause. That... was weird. What the heck was that?

Selene stared at it, trying to figure out what she was seeing. Her first instinct was that she was hallucinating, probably the result of whatever the drug Shin had injected into her system. But no, that was impossible because Shin could clearly see it too. So, what else could it be?

Abruptly, the ball began to duplicate. As first, one ball became two. Then two became four. Four became eight and so on and so. Not only that, Selene was also beginning to see other colors too, like electric blue and neon purple. At the same time, the sound of fluttering wings began to grow louder and louder, almost as if the balls of light and the wings were related -

Oh.

Selene slapped a hand over her own mouth and tried to lower herself even further into the ground as an entire Covenant patrol, all carrying their glowing plasma weapons, rushed right past her. From the glow of their weapons, Selene could make out just enough of the features of the creatures holding them to realize what they were: they were giant insects.

Selene did her best not to scream in both fear and disgust. Covered in slightly luminescent yellow and orange exoskeletons, each one of the beetle-like aliens was massive, standing a full head taller than Selene did and probably weighing twice as much. Their bodies were comprised of five distinct body segments, and they appeared to have three sets of limbs that were completely covered in claws. They also appeared to have a series of mandibles for a mouth, like regular insects, only these were obviously and horrifyingly much larger than those found on even the largest of Earth insects.

In short, these aliens were everything Selene's worst nightmares were made of.

Fortunately, none of the bugs seemed to notice the two small humans cowering on the ground not too far away. Instead, the creatures seemed intent on flying in the direction Selene and Shin had just come from, which, Selene was belatedly realizing, was the direction where all the gunfire was coming from. Dozens upon dozens of bugs flew right past them without stopping or pausing, and just when Selene was afraid their numbers would never run out, it did.

Selene waited until the sound of the flutter of their wings faded into the distance before sitting upright.

"What…" she couldn't help but ask, "the _hell_... were those!?"

"Drones," Shin calmly replied, and she could hear him brushing himself off. "As you can tell, they're some sort of bug-like aliens that fight for the Covenant. They're a pain in the ass to deal with because, as you saw, they can fly in relatively short spurts. And those fuckers are strong too. They can lift a fully grown and equipped airman pretty far up into the air, which makes things a little awkward when you shoot one down in middle of doing something like that."

"They're horrifying!" Selene exclaimed with a shudder. "You guys have to fight things like that?" she asked, her respect for soldiers suddenly increasing tenfold.

She could hear Shin shrugging. "Sort of. Don't normally see them on the battlefield because they love dark and damp places, just like a real bug, but they always seem to show up when you least expect them."

"Gawd!" Selene exclaimed, shuddering once more. It was official: once they got out of here, Selene was taking a very long and very _hot_ shower, just to try and scourge the image of those creatures out of her mind. Just thinking about them made her skin crawl!

"Anyways, we should probably leave while the Drones are distracted," Shin said, and Selene could hear him climbing to his feet. "Covies like to use Drones to flush out their enemies from enclosed spaces like bunkers, so there's usually - "

Shin abruptly threw himself onto the ground once, only this time Selene didn't need his help to figure out why. Emerging from around the corner in front of them, was an entirely new Covenant patrol. Unlike the Drones though, Selene could instantly recognize these aliens: it was an entire patrol of Jackals and Elites, the same type of aliens that had attacked her oh so many hours ago.

Selene quickly held her breath as the patrol casually walked down the tunnel in their direction, following in the wake of the Drone swarm. With their glowing plasma weapons and energy shields, they lit up the tunnel, making it a lot easier to see them, unlike the Drones, but somehow that made things a whole lot worse, rather than better.

For one thing, it allowed Selene a chance to see just how big and vicious looking each individual alien actually was. Even the smallest alien of the group stood a good thirty to forty centimeters taller than Selene did, and each one of them looked about as strong, if not stronger, than Shin did. Plus, they were all armed to the teeth with plasma weapons, though they obviously didn't need them as each alien clearly had been blessed to evolve with some rather vicious looking fangs or claws.

Secondly, to Selene's growing horror, she quickly realized the extra light would make it that much easier for the Covenant to spot them.

Without thinking, Selene glanced in Shin's direction, who glared at her long enough for her to realize moving around like that would be the last thing she wanted to do, as it would probably increase their chance of detection. Still, despite that, she couldn't help but try to slowly wiggled backwards so she was closer to the wall, in the hopes that her navy blue police uniform would help her blend in a bit more with the concrete.

As the patrol got closer, Selene could see that she and Shin at least had one thing going for them: it was clear none of the Covenant were paying attention. The Elites all appeared to be conversing amongst themselves while a number of Jackals appeared to be completely zoned out. It was obvious that this patrol clearly assumed the Drones had already cleared this part of the tunnel, and that any hostiles that may have been remaining was no threat to them. Which, to be fair, was true, as Selene had seen firsthand how ineffective her bullets were against even the smaller aliens.

Despite being in such proximity to these hostile aliens, Selene couldn't help but be pleased by what she saw. It was easy to fall into the trap of assuming the Covenant were nothing more than mindless automatons, always on the offensive, relentless, and vicious killers whose sole purpose in life was to kill humans.

But seeing them now helped remind Selene that while the Covenant were extremely dangerous and not to be taken lightly, they were still living, breathing creatures. And like all living, breathing creatures, they had their flaws. Flaws that Selene herself had fallen for more than once. Flaws such as: putting too much trust in their numbers. Basically, it was the idea that the more people there were, the less likely individuals would do something, simply because they assumed someone else had already done it. Selene couldn't even begin to count how many times she and her coworkers had lost a suspect due to something simple like not checking a car, simply because they had already assumed either the city Superintendent or a fellow police officer had already done so.

As the patrol started to wander off, Selene couldn't help but feel relieved that the same concept applied here, that this patrol wasn't looking for any human survivors, simply because the patrol ahead of them had already done so.

The blanket of darkness began to return as the Covenant started to walk away from Selene and Shin. Selene waited until they were out of sight before slowly climbing to her feet. She'd been laying on the ground for too long; now her entire body was pins and needles.

Still, she was alive, and that's all that mattered.

Reaching out into the darkness, she groped around until she near collided into Shin.

"Shin? You okay?" she whispered.

"Yeah. We have got to get the fuck out of these damn tunnels," he said.

"No kidding."

"There's got to be a station up ahead: can't think of how else those assholes would have gotten down here," Shin declared. "Let's get back onto the surface while we still got a chance."

Selene nodded, even though she knew Shin couldn't see her, and started forward.

 _CLANG!_

"Whoa!" Selene instinctively cried as she accidentally tripped over one of the train rails. Shin was able to catch her before she landed face first into the ground, but Selene wasn't paying attention, horrified by what she had just done.

Her cry echoed down the tunnels in both directions, including the direction the Covenant had gone. Shin summed up the situation rather succinctly.

"Shit."

The two of them stood there, hardly even breathing, as they waited to see how the Covenant would respond. Selene could feel her heart racing inside her chest, beating so quickly, she was afraid it would leapt out from under her skin.

The seconds ticked by, but nothing happened. Eventually, Selene began to become convinced the Covenant, by some miracle, had failed to hear her.

Shin must have agreed because he abruptly pulled her, holding onto her until she was upright.

"Let's try that again," he suggested, but before Selene could take another step, he stopped her. "A bit more quietly, this time, perhaps?"

Selene could feel her cheeks start to burn.

 _boom._

A low rumble coming from the direction the Covenant had gone caused Selene to freeze.

"What was that?" she asked as she began to pick up slight vibrations in the ground. "Is that an earthquake? But... how? Byzas is located nowhere near a fault line."

She glanced in Shin's direction and somehow, even in the dark, she could tell he had gone pale.

"Run," he said.

"What?"

"RUNNNNNN!" he screamed and startled Selene obeyed.

They sprinted down the tunnel towards the station, abandoning all attempts at keeping quiet. All the while, the rumbling and shaking continued to grow in intensity.

"What the hell is happening!?" Selene yelled as the walls began to visibly shake.

"You know what else causes earthquake-like effects that isn't an earthquake!? A really big _**fucking**_ _**bomb!**_ Now _MOVE!_ "

Selene hurriedly picked up the pace. As she ran though, she noticed her shadow was beginning to get casted onto the ground in front of her. Not only that, a loud whooshing noise was filling the air behind her, reminding her of the Drones' wings, only a hundred thousand times louder. Despite knowing better, Selene just couldn't help it: she looked behind her.

"HOLY SHIT!" she screamed as she spotted the massive fireball that was consuming the entire tunnel and quickly gaining on her.

Selene thought she had been sprinting at full speed before; at that sight, she found herself running even faster.

They reached the station in record time, and Selene somehow made it up onto the meter high platform in a single bound. Ahead, she could see daylight peeking out from the top of the station staircase. They were almost there! All she had to do was move just a bit faster!

They were almost there...!

Just a little more...!

They were going to make it...!

... and then suddenly the entire staircase collapsed, and Selene found herself with nothing but air beneath her feet. Just before everything went black, one last conscious thought passed through Selene's mind:

'They weren't going to make it.'

* * *

1\. In case it wasn't clear by now, Kingsley is actually supposed to be based off the character, Kingsley Shacklebolt from the _Harry Potter_ series. Why _Harry Potter?_ Well, aside from the fact that I lack originality, that's because the character of Selene Riddle is actually taken from a Harry Potter fanfiction I had planned on writing _years_ ago (though I'm sure the name itself isn't all that original either.) That's actually why her name is _Riddle._

No, don't worry, Selene Riddle wasn't supposed to be some secret lovechild between Voldmort and Bellatrix Lestrange (though I'm sure that's been done at some point.) No, Selene was supposed to be a bobby (British police officer) who was the Muggle granddaughter of Tom Riddle Senior (Voldmort's Muggle father.) I don't remember exactly what the plot of the story would have been, as I lost/delete my outline year ago, but I do remember it had something to do with Harry Potter realizing that because Selene shared the same blood as Voldmort, she could have been used as a great weapon against him using some sort of blood magic spell or something like that (plots like that were all the rage in HP FF back then.)

At any case, that story never made it past the planning stage, but I liked the name so I kept it just in case it ever proved useful.

\- For anyone who would like to know what was going on at the end of the chapter, well, you can either wait for the next time Selene shows up, or you can go back and read chapter 3 of _Missing in Action_ :)


	27. Chapter 27

Broman

Now _that_ would almost be a _Game of Thrones_ level twist, wouldn't it!

I'm also glad you're able to enjoy all the tie-ins. It can be a bit difficult to write them, as I want to make sure I give enough of a hint for readers to follow, yet make sure it seamlessly fits within the scene at hand. So, thank you very much!

Also, I want to take this moment to thank everyone who followed or favorited this story. I guess you guys really enjoyed reading about the civilian perspective because I had more people leave a follow or a favorite than I've ever had in one week. So, once again, thanks and I hope to be bring more "civilian perspective" content to this story.

* * *

 **Chapter 27**

 **Covenant designated Landing Zone: Deliverance*  
Forerunner Designated World: MS 222-53 a  
9th Age of Reclamation  
6th Cycle of the Planet's Rotation  
**

 **Zek**

Concrete and glass. That's all Zek saw, no matter which way he looked. It almost a nightmare, really. As a poor Ruuhtian that had grown up on the outskirts of Tilu City, Zek was used to the sight of massive sprawling cities and towering buildings. But the humans seemed to take it to new heights.

Dull gray and tinted glass, as far as the eye could. Not even a hint of turquoise. And the weather? Ice and snow covered the ground, making travel somewhat of a treacherous chore. Whenever the wind blew, it cut right through Zek's armor and uniform, chilling him to the bone despite his best efforts. And the skies were dark and overcast, as if the Sky Mother couldn't bear to see what sort of damage these humans had done to her beautiful world.

In short, Zek couldn't understand how these humans could tolerate living in this cold, desolate place.

"I don't know: I kind of like it."

Zek reflexively jumped at the sound of Rezan's voice. Zek hadn't realized he had spoken that last part out loud.

"You _like_ it?" Zek echoed once he was able to recover his wits. "You're telling me you like all this? How?"

He could see Rezan tilting his head in a shrug. "I don't know. I guess there's a certain ruthless practicality to the way this city is built." He gestured at the roads. "See how the roads are all laid out in a grid-like pattern?"

"But that's so dull," Zek protested. "Where's the aesthetic appeal?"

"Function over looks," Rezan reminded him. "As long as it works, who cares what it looks like?"

"Yes, but the humans live here, don't they?" Zek retorted. "Why wouldn't a living being try to make the place they live in more visually appealing? Who would want to life like that?"

"I wouldn't mind," Rezan admitted.

"You would, would you?" Zek noted, narrowing his eyes. "Are you sure you're a Ruuhtian and not a T'vaoan?"

Rezan whirled on him. "You take that back!" he hissed, though without any real heat in his voice. Zek bared his teeth in amusement and shook his head, causing Rezan to turn away in a huff.

Zek quickly casted around, trying to think of something to say in order to continue this moment of levity, but unfortunately nothing came to mind and the moment was lost, and Zek was left with trying _not_ to think about the one subject he couldn't help _but_ think about: his and Rezan's survival from the _Hammer of Justice._

In truth, there wasn't much _for_ Zek to think about. As soon as he saw that Unggoy reaching for the bomb the Demons had left behind, instinct had taken over. He remembered grabbing Rezan with a strength he hadn't known he had possessed and dragging him over to the escape pods, all the while thanking the gods he and Rezan had been manning Security Station Salvation that day as Salvation was perhaps the _only_ security station on the ship that was positioned right next to an escape pod.

As the ship began to rumble, Zek remembered throwing Rezan into the escape pod and hurtling himself in afterwards, hitting the button to close the door with his foot as he did. As flames began enveloping the corridor, Zek remembered punching the launch button so hard, he had actually cracked it. After that though, everything was one giant blur.

Zek vaguely remembered watching as the _Hammer_ simply disintegrated behind them. He vaguely remembered watching as the rest of the fleet began to make a retreat. He vaguely remembered making sure to reset the autopilot so that it would take them to the landing zone instead of anywhere else on the planet, where they would hopefully have been rescued by friendly forces. And then, after that, Zek couldn't remember anything else. He couldn't remember entering the planet's atmosphere. He couldn't remember the landing. And most importantly, he couldn't remember getting knocking out.

Unfortunately, what Zek _could_ remember, with absolute clarity, was the feeling of terror he had when he and Rezan first spotted the Demons, lurking in the corridors of their ship. He remembered the growing sense of dread as he watched as the Demons _butchered_ their way through the ship on their way to their objective.

But most importantly, Zek remembered the growing sense of dread as he realized that nothing; security teams, bulkhead doors, even Kamet himself; could stop the Demons from going wherever they wanted. The only consolation Zek had was the fact that because that stupid Unggoy had accidentally set the Demons' bomb off early, there was no way the Demons could have made it off the _Hammer_ before the ship was destroyed.

Still, despite knowing the Demons were dead, Zek was sure he was going to have many a sleepless night in the coming months ahead, forever haunted by the sight of the Demons cutting through his friends like they were nothing more than insects to be crushed underfoot.

Zek felt a shiver go down his spine, and it had nothing to do with the cold. He nervously glanced over his shoulder, as if a Demon would suddenly leap out from the nearby building.

"What is it Zek, did you see something?"

Zek quickly shook his head to assure Rezan. "No; it was but a figment of my imagination," he admitted.

Rezan visibly relaxed. "Yes, this area is not very safe. Come on: we're very near the firebase. Hopefully things will be better once we are around our comrades."

Zek nodded in agreement.

Despite having landed in what was supposed to be friendly controlled territory, the area was far from safe, as Zek and Rezan had learned when they first emerged from the escape pod and something shot at them. Not being armed themselves, they had been forced to hide until whatever took a shot at them got bored and left. Afterwards, Zek and Rezan had been left wondering what to do.

Fortunately, Rezan had had the good sense to grab a communicator before they had abandoned the ship and as a result, they were able to learn there was actually a friendly firebase not too far away from where they had landed. It had been set up in one of the human structures, a building that was dedicated to the human's past. What did the humans call them? Not a shrine but a... museum. That's right.

Zek could only hope that not only would the base have plenty of guards and defenses, it would at least be _warm_ so he could finally get out this cursed cold.

"Come Zek! It should just be around this corner!" Rezan shouted, and Zek couldn't help but pick up his pace. Just a few more steps and Zek could finally feel safe again -

Zek skittered to an abrupt halt at the sight that laid in front of them.

"No..."

"What in seven hells has occurred here!?"

Right in front of them was a human building that had been completely destroyed, sitting in the exact place the firebase should have been. Two Type-44 troop carriers were parked on the ground nearby with their doors open, and all sorts of Covenant warriors were running to and from the ships and the wreckage. As Zek and Rezan got closer, they could see the warriors were digging through the rubble of the building. Already they had extracted a number of trapped warriors from within, but even then, Zek could see several dozen bodies of Kig-Yar and Unggoy sticking out from the rocks.

"Gods..." Rezan whispered. "What has happened here?"

"I don't know, but let us find out," Zek said, pointing at a fellow Ruuhtian sitting on a gravity stool nearby.

"Brother!" Zek called out, causing the Ruuhtian to turn in their direction. As he did, Zek faltered as he realized the Ruuhtian was completely covered in dust, and was bleeding from several wounds, the most devastating of which was his left arm: from the elbow down, it was completely missing.

Realizing he was staring, Zek quickly gathered his thoughts.

"Brother, what has happened here?" Zek asked.

The Ruuhtian dipped his head, allowed some blood to drip out from his mouth.

"The thrice damned humans were able to infiltrate our bases before our defenses were fully established," the Ruuhtian gravely growled. "And were thus able to drop bombs with impunity on us. They were able to destroy much of the base before many of our brethren even knew we were under attack. Curse those cowardly humans!"

"How many dead and wounded are there?" Rezan asked, sounding shocked.

"I do not know," the Ruuhtian replied. "But I do know my entire Lance was destroyed, including by blood brother, who was killed by falling debris right next to me!" The Ruuhtian's head snapped back, and Zek could see how much in mourning this Ruuhtian was. "Sky Mother knows, I tried to save him, but there was nothing I could do! One moment, he was there, the next, nothing! There was nothing I could do!"

The Ruuhtian started warbling, and Zek cautiously reached out to awkwardly rub the Ruuhtian on the back, making sure not to aggravate any of his wounds. Zek suddenly remembered he had some khat(2) in his armor pouch, and he hastily pulled it out to give to the Ruuhtian.

"Here Brother," Zek said, "take this. You have earned it."

"Many thanks Brother," the Ruuhtian mournfully said as he took the offered khat and threw some into his mouth.

"ALL WOUNDED, BEGIN BOARDING NOW!"

Zek and Rezan hastily moved out of the way as the Ruuhtian struggled to climb to his feet.

"Brother, do you require assistance?" Rezan hurriedly asked as he and Zek watched the Ruuhtian awkwardly start to make his way towards one of the ships.

"Nay Brother, it is not my injuries that stay my feet, but that of my failure to protect my blood brother," the Ruuhtian sadly said. "For this great journey, I must make on my own."

Zek nodded in understanding and stood back as to not be in his way.

"Wait Brother!" Rezan called out. "Your weapons!"

He pointed at the spot next to where the Ruuhtian had sat. There, laying on the ground, was a single Type-51 carbine and Type-25 plasma pistol.

"Take them," the Ruuhtian said without looking back. "For I shall not be needing them where I am heading. Take care Brothers. May the Sky Mother and all the Gods above watch over you."

Zek and Rezan quietly watched as the Ruuhtian painfully made his way towards the assault boat. As soon as the Ruuhtian disappeared inside, Zek turned and glanced at the weapons he had left behind. After a moment of awkward silence, Zek mentally shrugged before he reached out and grabbed the carbine off the ground. Looking it over, Zek was glad to see that not only was the weapon fully loaded and intact, it also had a number of spare cartridges, all of which Zek immediately pocketed.

"Well," Rezan began as he lifted the pistol. "Now what?"

Zek thought the question over. Now that he was armed, he felt a lot more confident, but he was no leader. And with no Sangheili in sight to give them orders, Zek had no idea what to do.

"I suppose we should help out with the rescue," Zek finally said.

With no other suggestions, Rezan quickly signaled his agreement, and the two of them started to make their way towards the rubble. But as they passed one building that was still intact, they heard a scream of pain coming from within.

Zek and Rezan exchanged looks. It wasn't a scream from any of the Covenant races, of that much he was certain, but other than that, Zek couldn't figure out what it would have come from.

Without saying a word, the two of them turned and entered to the room to see -

\- a cursed human. It was clearly one of the human warriors, as the alien was wearing the colors of the human's UNSC, but this one was without its weapons or armor. Surrounding the human were three Unggoy: two Minors and a single Major. The three Unggoy were all armed with sharp metal sticks, probably pulled directly from the wreckage, and were jabbing the human all across it's body.

"Stupid human!" one of the Minors yelled, kicking the human hard in the face and causing the human to spit out a large amount of blood.

"Not so tough now, huh!?" the other Minor yelled as he brought his stick down hard on the human's arm. Zek could hear something cracking and the human screamed out loud.

As the human laid there, groaning, the Major gestured for the two Minors to pick the human up.

"This is for my Brothers!" the Major yelled, before driving his stick into the human's leg. The human screamed in pain once more as the Major gave the stick a good twist before yanking it out, and looking more closely, Zek could see half a dozen more cuts like that one spread across it's body.

Laughing, the Unggoy forcefully tossed the human to the ground, who started to try to crawl away.

"Look at the worm crawl!" one of the Unggoy jeered.

"In the dirt, like all insects belong!" another one yelled.

Viciously stabbing the human in the foot and pinning it to the ground, the Major grabbed the human by it's mane and pulled hard, yanking some of the hair out.

"We should cut off its reproductive organs and shove it down its throat!" the Major yelled, to the cheers of his men.

Watching the abuse go down, Zek couldn't help but give an indifferent shrug. While he wasn't one to advocate creatures playing with their food like that, humans _were_ heretics. Plus, one thing Zek had learned over the seasons was that the key to controlling the Unggoy was to let them have their fun every once in a while.

Zek stared to turn away.

 _FWOOZ!_

At the sound of a plasma pistol discharging, Zek jumped and whirled around, his carbine raised and ready for action. Instead, all he saw was the human lying on the ground, dead, with a single plasma bolt through it's head.

Zek glanced at the Unggoy to see which one of them had fired the shot, only to see all three of them were staring _at him_ , with furious looks on their face.

Voi paska.

Very slowly, Zek turned around. Standing behind him was Rezan, his plasma pistol raised, and a look of horror and disgust on his face. It was Rezan who had shot the human.

Great.

"You - !" the Major began, shaking with absolute fury. "Why you shoot my prisoner!?"

Zek glanced at Rezan, who was staring at the Major with a look of absolute disgust on his face.

"Because this," Rezan pointed at the human's rapidly cooling corpse on the ground, "is not the way of a Covenant Warrior! We do not torture our enemies! Kill them, yes, but what we are doing is a mercy! What you ryökäles were doing is the opposite of mercy!"

"They Heretics!" the Major screamed back. "The San'Shyuum say we can do what we want with Heretics, and no big bully like you say otherwise!" The Major's eyes narrowed. "Unless _you_ a heretic."

At that, Zek's head snapped up. He might not have agreed with what Rezan did, but he'd be cursed if he let an _Unggoy_ talk to him like that.

"You watch your mouth, Unggoy," Zek growled in warning, but in a surprising move of defiance for an Unggoy, the Major whirled around on him and sneered.

"What you gonna do 'bout it," the Major taunted. "Heretic?"

Zek punched him, hard across the face, with enough force to knock him to the ground. The other Unggoy let out a squeak of alarm and started to draw their weapons, but before they could, Rezan fired three shots into the ground by their feet.

"Don't," he warned, "even think about it."

In the meantime, Zek had planted his foot into the back of the Major, making sure to dig his claws into the Major's flesh.

"You Unggoy," he began, "need to remember your place in this Covenant."

Reaching down, Zek calmly ripped the Major's mask right off his face and tossed it across the room, causing the pathetic creature to begin gasping out loud in panic as he tried to draw breath, but only finding poisonous oxygen filling his lungs.

Bending over slowly, Zek place his mouth by the Major's ear. "You Unggoy are beneath us. Forever and always. _Never_ forget that," he hissed.

"And you Kig-Yar are beneath _us_!"

Zek stiffened, and immediately straightened. Strolling into the room was a single Sangheili Evocatus(2), much to Zek's horror.

The Sangheili casted a critical eye around the room, and Zek hastily moved away from the Unggoy Major still gasping for breath on the ground. Zek could see the Sangheili staring at the corpse of the human lying on the ground, but unfortunately Zek couldn't tell what the Sangheili was thinking.

"Who shot the heretic!?" the Sangheili demanded.

Before Zek could say anything, Rezan took one step forward. "I did Sire."

"But I authorized it," Zek quickly said. He didn't know what Rezan was thinking, volunteering that information like that, but Zek had no intention of allowing Rezan to get himself in trouble.

"No he did not sire," Rezan immediately said, much to Zek's annoyance. "My actions were undertaken alone and by my own initiative."

"Rezan, shut up," Zek muttered out of the side of his mouth.

"Zek, you shut up. You had nothing to do with this."

"I'll be able to handle this Rezan, but only if you shut up!"

"This is my problem Zek, you need not - "

"SILENCE!" the Sangheili roared, causing Zek to jump in alarm. "You, Kig-Yar," he pointed at Zek, "silence! You, Kig-Yar," he pointed at Rezan, "will explain why you executed that human. And you, Unggoy," the Sangheili abruptly pulled out his plasma rifle and calmly shot the still gasping Unggoy Major once through the back of his head. "Die in silence."

The room was very quiet after that.

Slowly stalling forward until he was standing right in front of Rezan, the Sangheili growled, "Explained. Now."

"The Unggoy were torturing the human sire," Rezan quickly said. "As the Ones Most Holy have often said sire, our Crusade against the humans is but a mercy, to free them from this heretical life their leaders have imposed on them. Torture, sire, is not a mercy."

"So you decided to kill a human," the Sangheili growled, "contrary to my commands that all humans were to be taken _alive!?_ Explain yourself!"

That caught Zek's attention. Since when were they taking human prisoners?

Out of the corner of his eye, Zek could see a look of fear finally appearing on Rezan's face as Rezan finally realized how badly he had screwed up.

"Sire, we... I mean I..." Rezan spurted. "I can only claim ignorance sire. We are not part of the vanguard Legion sire, and thus, we never received your commands."

"And what Legion are you a part of, Kig-Yar?" the Sangheili growled.

"We are part of the Fleet, sire. We were assigned to the _Hammer of Justice_."

For some reason, that last part seemed to catch the Sangheili's attention.

" _Hammer of Justice_ ," the Sangheili echoed. "That was the most Holy ship that defiled by the Demons, was it not!?"

Zek couldn't prevent the shudder that passed through him at that reminder. "Yes sire, it was," he reluctantly reported.

"And did you see these Demons?"

Both Zek and Rezan bobbed their heads. "Yes sire, we did."

"Then you will describe them to me, in great detail!"

Zek couldn't help but exchange a look of confusion with Rezan.

"Most Noble One," Zek began. "Please forgive my impudence, but why? The Demons are dead."

"No, they are not."

"What!?" Zek reflexively spat out, but then cringed at the insubordinate tone in his voice. Fortunately, the Sangheili didn't seem to notice.

"The Demons are here, inside this city," the Sangheili announced. "And I intend to present their heads myself to the High Prophets. Which is why all humans are to be taken _alive_ and _intact!_ " the Sangheili bellowed, glaring at both Rezan and the two remaining Unggoy.

"As you will sire!" Zek reflexively bellowed at the top of his lungs. The Sangheili gave a single nod of approval.

"Gather your weapons my Warriors," he commanded. "We resume our hunt, NOW!"

With that, the Sangheili marched out of the room, leaving Zek stunned. He couldn't figure out what was worse: the fact the Demons somehow had managed to survive the destruction of the _Hammer_ -

\- or that he was going to go _looking_ for them.

Zek could only hope this little hunt of the Sangheili wasn't drawing resources away from the _real_ mission.

 **XXXXX**

 **Byzas, Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
1643**

 **Adel**

"Reloading!"

Adel ducked back around the corner and awkwardly ripped out the magazine from his rifle and dropped it to the ground. Quickly reloading, he whirled around again in time to see three Grunts dashing across the street in the open. Leveling his rifle, he aimed it at the last Grunt in the line and let it rip.

 _BANG BANG! BANG BANG!_

Adel could see puffs of dust and snow getting thrown in the air from where his rounds were impacting, and the Grunt lifted its hand to protect its face from the debris flying all over the place, but the little alien kept running, giving no sigh it had been injured at all. Grimacing, Adel adjusted the grip on his rifle and fired again, but at this point the Grunt had already made it to safety behind cover.

"Fuck," he snarled. Ever since his hand had gotten injured, Adel's aim just wasn't there.

Slinging the rifle over his shoulder, Adel reached down and pulled out a frag grenade.

"FRAG OUT!" he yelled, hurtling the grenade in the general area the Grunts had disappeared to.

 _BOOM!_

The grenade exploded, sending a plume of dust and smoke into the air, but otherwise, there was no other indication Adel had even managed to hit any of the Grunts in question.

"Adel, INCOMING!"

Adel instinctively hurtled himself away as two plasma grenades emerged from the chaos and adhered themselves to the wall he was taking cover behind.

 _weeeeeeEEEEweeeeeeEEEE! BOOMBOOM!_

Coughing and sneezing as masonry dust filled his lungs, Adel blindly fired a couple of burst in the direction he suspected the grenades had come from, before making a hasty retreat. With plasma hissing right over his shoulder, Adel hurtled himself over a line of sandbags into an impact crater.

"Adel! You alright?" X asked him as he reloaded his rifle.

"Fucking shit!" Adel spat as he struggled to entangled himself.

"I'm going to take that as a 'yes!'" X drily reported before standing up and began laying down covering fire downrange.

"Why don't you take it and shove it -!" Adel started to snap back, but was cut off when a loud _WHOOSH_ filled the air. "INCOMING!"

Adel dove for the ground again as the plasma mortars came screaming in and detonated not too far away, unleashing their deadly payloads and causing the ground to tremble. Battlefield debris was turned into murderous shrapnel as they were picked up off the ground and launched in all directions at extreme velocities, and Adel could hear them whistling as they flow by over him. Cries of _"CORPSMAN!"_ and _"MEDIC!"_ once again filled the airwaves indicating that at least one person had gotten hit by the blast.

"What the fuck!?" Adel demanded as he recovered. "I thought the fucking Army was supposed to be launching an attack along the Covies' southern flank, try and draw some of this heat away from us. DO THE COVIES LOOK FUCKING DISTRACTED TO YOU!?"

"Don't ask me Adel, I just fucking work here!" X snapped back as he raised his rifle to fire in the direction of the Covenant once more, only for there to be a mute _click._ "Malfunction! Adel, cover!"

"Gahh!" Adel snarled as he rose up, rifle at the ready, searching for a target, but there was so much back and forth gunfire, it was hard to keep track of where the Covenant actually were, so he settled for simply emptying his magazine in a random direction.

"Where the fuck is Sam with that goddamn resupply!?" Adel demanded as he extracted one of his last three magazines from his belt and reloaded. "How the fuck does he expect me to kill anything if I don't have any fucking ammo to do so!?"

"You haven't killed anything yet motherfucker!" X replied with a laugh before standing up to fire, and Adel let out a low growl at the reminder.

" _ROCKET UP! ROCKET UP! ASSAULT TEAM UP THE LINE!"_

"Oh great, that's us!" X yelped. "Come on Adel: we got to go!"

Without a second glance, X grabbed his Jackhammer and took off running.

Slinging his rifle over his back, Adel grabbed the carrying cases for whatever rockets they had left and took off in X's wake. As soon as he emerged from his hole, Adel immediately began taking plasma fire, but they were either too high or tearing up the road right behind him, so Adel ignored the plasma and focused on running as fast as he could. The sound of his heavy breathing filled his ears, quickly drowning out all other sounds.

X skittered to a stop at the next building, and Adel hurriedly joined him. Just around the corner, the barrel of a .50cal heavy machine gun was sticking out from the hole in the wall, blazing away at the Covenant.

"FRIENDLIES COMING THROUGH!" X screamed at the top of his lungs to be heard over the monstrous roar of the .50cal. The machine gun abruptly stopped shooting.

"Come on! Hurry up!" the two Army Dogfaces manning the gun yelled, and X and Adel hastily ducked inside the building, past the gunners who promptly opened up more.

On the interior of the building, they found a hassled looking Army sergeant working on linking a number of .50cal rounds together.

"Sergeant Restrepo!" X called out and the Sergeant's head snapped up. "Who's calling for the assault team?"

"Your Sergeant Reynolds did!" Restrepo yelled back. "He's up on the second floor!"

 _FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ KABANG!_

Adel couldn't stop himself from flinching as the sound of a needler explosion filled the air and someone began screaming in pain. He turned around to see the .50cal gunner had taken a couple of needler rounds straight to his right bicep, which had promptly exploded, blowing off his entire arm and taking a good chunk of his shoulder with it. Blood was coating the walls and spilling all over the ground as the man writhed on the ground, screaming at the top of his lungs, and the inhuman noises he was making caused shivers to go down Adel's spine.

"Man down!" Restrepo screamed as she leapt to her feet and dashed over to the soldier. Adel watched as she dragged him away from the gun and began breaking out her IFAK. "Mauser, get on that fucking gun! _MEDIC!_ "

The assistant gunner hastily scooted over and took position behind the .50cal. Ignoring the puddle of blood that was beginning to soak his pants, Mauser reached out, racked the machine gun a couple of times, and began firing once more. Adel was hardly paying attention though as he watched as Restrepo desperately worked on trying to save the original gunner's life, but it didn't look promising as the gunner was beginning to convulse.

Someone began tugging on Adel's arm.

"Come on, we got to go!" X was yelling. "Adel! Let's go!"

Throwing one last look at the wounded Doggie, Adel allowed himself to be pulled away. The two Marines started charging up the stairs when –

" _INCOMING!"_

 _KABOOM!_

Adel was nearly sent tumbling back down the stairs as the entire building shook from the impact of the plasma mortars. Chucks of plaster toppled from the ceiling and shattering against Adel's helmet and shoulders, leaving him coated in all sorts of dust.

"Son of a bitch!" Adel spat, trying to clear his mouth. "Goddamn mortars are getting fucking closer and closer, aren't they!?"

"Oh good, I thought it was just me!" X yelled back as he climbed back up and continued up the rest of the staircase.

" _INCOMING!"_

Adel and X stumbled down the hall as another plasma mortar came screaming in. At the end of the corridor, they found Reynolds staring out a window with a pair of binoculars pressed against his face while the platoon radio telephone operator sat nearby.

"Staff Sergeant! Assault team reporting as ordered!" X yelled, catching Reynold's attention.

"Lance Corporal! Need you over here!" Reynolds yelled, gesturing for X to join him. "Dunno know if you noticed, but them mortars are gettin' mighty close to us! Reckon Covies got a gorram spotter!"

"Do we know where he is Staff Sergeant?"

"Yeah, he's got to be in that there buildin'!" Adel watched as Reynolds handed the binos over to X and pointed out the window. "Only place that got eyes on us! Been pepperin' 'im for a spell with machine guns, but we ain't got his ass yet. Be easier at this point to take out the entire room! You think you can do that?"

"Aye Staff Sergeant!" X reported, handing the binos back and grabbing his Jackhammer. "Adel! I need a thermobaric round!"

"We don't have any left!"

"What?"

"I said we don't have any left!" Adel yelled again as he dug through the carrying cases for the rockets and finding only one rocket left. "We only have one rocket left, and it's a HEAT!"

"Fuck! That'll have to do!"

Extracting the rocket from its case, Adel quickly jammed it into the rear of the Jackhammer as X hefted the weapon onto his shoulder.

"Backblast area all secure!" Adel bellowed.

"ROCKET!"

Adel ducked his head slightly as the Jackhammer erupted, and he looked over his shoulder in time to see a hole getting blasted into the side of a large building about a hundred meters away, sending a mass of debris crashing to the ground below. Adel could only hope that there had been some Covenant soldiers that had been standing underneath.

"Rounds complete!" Adel yelled, extracting the empty tube from the launcher and tossing it aside.

"Good shot!" Reynolds complimented. "That'll leave his ears ringin'! Marines! Hammer that hole!"

He swiftly brought his rifle up to his shoulder and began firing on the hole Adel and X just created. Adel quickly followed suit, not really sure what he was shooting at, but not really caring either.

"Staff Sergeant!"

The platoon RTO, Private Pendanski, abruptly appeared right next to Reynolds.

"Staff Sergeant, I got Lieutenant Lancelot on the line for you!" Pendanski breathlessly reported as he handed the radio telephone over.

"Maintain coverin' fire Marines!" Reynolds barked as he grabbed the phone. "Sir, Staff Sergeant Reynolds here!"

Reynolds pulled away from the window to continue talking on the radio and Adel quickly moved aside to take his place. Immediately spotting movement on the street below, Adel shouted out a warning: "Contact, low!"

"Pendanski, keep suppressing that building! Adel, you and me hit those targets below!" X commanded even as Adel promptly opened fire on the Elite he had seen. He could see the Elite's shield flickering before fading away as his rounds struck, but before Adel could even try to finish off the Elite, he felt the bolt on his rifle lock back.

"Oh, come on!" Adel yelled as he checked his ammo counter and found he had ran out of ammo. "This fucking sucks! Reloading!"

Moving to the side, Adel ejected his magazine and drove a new one in before whirling around the corner, hoping that Elite was still there, but unfortunately the Elite had disappeared in the time it took Adel to reload.

Adel jumped as someone abruptly touched his shoulder, and he looked around wildly, but it was only Reynolds.

"Marines, listen up!" he yelled. "We're takin' too many casualties here and now Command thinks we're overextended! Orders are to begin fallin' back to secondary positions! Pendanski, find your way back to Lieutenant Silva. You Assaultmen, with me!"

Without another word, Reynolds took off.

"Oh shit!" Adel yelped as he dumped all the empty rocket carrying cases to the side and grabbed his empty magazines. "We gotta go!"

"I'm right behind you!" X promised, tossing the Jackhammer onto his back.

Adel immediately dashed out of the room and towards the stairs that would take him back down to the ground floor. But before he could go more than a couple of meters -

 _ **KABOOM!**_

\- Adel was knocked clean off his feet as X was abruptly thrown into him as a shockwave was sent rippling down the hall, coating the Marines in a thick cloud of dust and ripping the wallpaper off the very walls.

Ears ringing and violently coughing, Adel nevertheless still had the presence of mind to grab his rifle and look around for the source of the explosion, only to see the room he and X had just vacated had taken a direct hit from a fuel rod cannon, leaving it in ruins.

A cold sweat started to break out all over Adel as it suddenly struck him, how close to being killed he had just been, and he couldn't help but gasp, "Holy shit that was close!"

X groaned in response, startling Adel.

"X, you alright!?" Adel yelped as he quickly began checking X over for wounds. X batted his hands away.

"I just got the wind knocked out of me," X reported before hesitating. "I think."

"I don't see any injuries," Adel informed him. "Dude, we got to get out of here before the Covies realize they missed us and put another shell through here."

"Yeah, yeah, help me up!"

Adel grabbed X by the back of his vest and hauled him up to his feet and together, the two of them staggered down to the ground floor. Reynolds looked up as they approached.

"You two okay?"

"Yeah, we're fine Staff Sergeant," X said before Adel could. "Room took a direct hit just as we left. Need a few seconds to catch our breath is all."

"Sorry," Reynolds said apologetically, "but no time. Sergeant Restrepo! Sergeant Restrepo!"

Restrepo glanced up from her machine gun. "Yeah Sar'nt?"

"Displace and fall back to secondary rally!"

"Got it Sar'nt! Alright Mauser, break this shit down and let's move out! You grab the gun, I'll get the tripod and the ammo!"

"Marines, cover 'em!"

Adel bounced forward and assumed a kneeling firing position right by the entrance hole to the building. As he sprayed his rifle downrange, he could hear the Army Doggies grabbing their machine gun and running out of the room, leaving behind only a small pile of brass casings and metal links, as well as a large puddle of blood.

"Break contact!" Reynolds commanded as soon as the Doggies were gone, "and let's bounce!"

Firing one last shot, Adel surged to his feet and followed Reynolds as he led them out of the building.

Outside, things were in complete chaos. Bullets and plasma were crisscrossing up and down the street, artillery and mortars were screaming by overhead, and explosions were going off left and right. Despite the promised Army offensive against the Covenant's southern flank, the Covenant attack had yet to abate; in fact, to Adel, it almost seemed as if it was actually intensifying, as if the Covies had somehow managed to pick up on the fact the Marines were about ready to pull back.

Running down the street, doing their best to dodge the stray plasma that flew in their direction, the group nearly ran into Sam who was headed the opposite way.

"Hey! I got ammo!" Sam breathlessly reported, lifting an entire assault pack full of loaded magazines. "Where are you guys going?"

"Corporal, Battalion is gettin' ready to pull us back to secondary defensive positions," Reynolds explained. "Seabees are workin' on prepin' that now! I need you and your team to 'interface' with the engies, work on riggin' this road with 'plosives to cover the rest of the 'toon's retreat!"

"Aye aye Staff Sergeant!"

Reynolds nodded, and then promptly disappeared.

"Hey, restock on ammo!" Sam ordered, tossing the bag to X. "I'm gonna go find one of the engies, see what they need use to do!"

"Hey, did you pick up anymore rockets Sam? We're all out," X asked as Adel grabbed the bags.

"No, but we'll worry about that later! Hang tight, I'll be right back!"

"Okay!"

Sam darted off, and both Adel and X dove into a nearby crater for cover.

"Man, what the fuck is this shit," Adel complained as he refilled his ammo pouches with fresh magazines before tossing the bags away. "They want us to build obstacles? Do fucking people not know what assaultmen do? We erase the obstacles, not create them!"

"'Let them alone. If the blind lead the blind - '" X started to say.

"Stop fucking doing that!" Adel snapped before X could finish his quote. "If I want to know what some ancient asshole had to say about this situation, I'd fucking ask!"

"Sorry, force of habit," X quickly said.

 _"INCOMING!"_

Adel ducked his head as another mortar exploded nearby, showering him with dirt.

"Man, if we're going to fuck pull back, we better fucking do it soon!" Adel said with a groan. "What the fuck is taking Sam so long!?"

As if on cue, Adel looked up and happen to spot two people running towards him. One of them was Sam, the other was some Army dude. Both men prepared to dive into Adel's hole but before they could, another mortar exploded nearby, knocking both men to the ground.

"Ah fuck!" X yelped. "Hang on Corporal, I'm coming to get you! Adel, covering fire!"

Adel automatically turned and started firing his rifle down the street. Behind him, he could hear X scrambling out of the hole and dashing over to Sam.

A plasma bolt splashed into the ground nearby, and Adel twisted and unloaded a burst of fire in the rough direction the plasma had originated from, but between the haze and the distance involved, there was no way Adel could tell if he hit anything.

Movement from his right peripheral vision caught his attention and Adel turned and almost immediately opened fire, only, to his horror, he realized it was one of his fellow Marines from 1st Squad; Adel had already forgotten how far back he was from the actual frontline. Fortunately Adel was able to prevent himself from actually firing and shooting one of his buddies in the back, but it was a near thing. Letting out a sigh of relief, Adel realized he was definitely going to have to make sure he properly identified his targets before shooting at them in the near future.

Fortunately, at the moment it wasn't something he was going to have to worry about as, with a loud grunt, X returned with Sam and the Army Doggie in tow.

"Son of a bitch!" Sam grunted as he tossed himself into the hole. "This shit is getting really old, really quickly."

"Come on dude, get in here!" Adel yelled, urging everyone in as more plasma splashed against the ground nearby. "Who the fuck is this guy?" he asked, jabbing a finger at the Doggie.

"Corporal Elias!" the man replied, sounding out of breath. "9-97th Engineers, 1/53rd Armored! LT said you guys were going to help us block off this road. You combat engineers?"

"No, we're infantry assault Marines," Sam replied but Elias shook his head.

"Sorry, I don't know what that is."

"We do what you guys do, but better," Adel immediately sneered. Without looking, Sam reached out and smacked him hard against his shoulder, but Elias didn't seem too bothered.

"Good enough for me!" he replied, removing a musette bag from around his shoulders and handing it over. "Take these claymores, start setting them up! We'll use them to cover the withdraw of the rest of the Marines! Come find me when you're done!"

With that, Elias ran off.

Almost immediately, Sam turned and punched Adel in the shoulder once more.

"Ow, what the fuck was that for!?"

"You always chose the worst times to fucking mouth off, you know that!?" Sam snapped as he reached into the musette bag and extracted a couple of claymore anti-personnel mines. Scanning them with his TACPAD, he shoved them into Adel's arms. "Because apparently you're such a fucking expert with explosives, _you_ get to fucking plant these! X and I will cover. Go!"

"I was only kidding - !" Adel started to protest but Sam grabbed him, lifted him up, and shoved him out of the hole.

"Come on! Clock's ticking! Move it!" Sam barked.

"Ah crap!" Adel yelped as he realized Sam was serious. Making sure he had his rifle, Adel scrambled away.

Adel ducked his head down as he ran down the street, trying to avoid getting hit by all the plasma and needles flying by overhead. He wanted to stop and return fire, but there was nothing visible for him to shoot at plus, that would take time. And the last thing Adel wanted was to be running around a battlefield with an armful of explosives, so the sooner he got rid of these claymores, the better off he would be.

Realizing that Sam technically never told him _where_ to plant the claymore mines, only that he _had_ to do so, Adel ducked behind the first corner that took him out of the line of fire he found. Grabbing one of the claymores, he extended the wire legs and then propped the mine onto the ground. Despite not really caring where the mine was placed, Adel _did_ want the mine to kill some Covenant, so he took a moment to figure out what the best angle to place the claymore was. Once that he set, he carefully reached out and removed the safety pin. The device was now armed and ready for remote detonation from Sam's TACPAD.

A noise from Adel caused him to turn around.

"Oh SHIT!"

Adel reflexively ducked and was thus able to accidently dodge the plasma dagger that had been thrusted in his direction at about neck height. He tried to bring his rifle to bear, but the Elite casually kicked the weapon from his hands. Surging forward, the Elite grabbed Adel by the neck with it's free hand and slammed Adel into the wall. Adel's assault pack and armor was just enough to buffer the blow, but the impact was still enough to shock Adel into action.

Lashing out with his legs, Adel managed to deliver a good solid kick to the Elite's knee, causing the Elite to stumble slightly and prevent it from stabbing Adel in the face with it's dagger.

Finding that his feet were still touching the ground, Adel was able to twist his body, and break the Elite's hold around his neck. At the same time, Adel brought his left arm up and drove his elbow straight down onto the Elite's wrist, clearing the Elite's hand away from his neck. Such a move also left the Elite's face open to counterattack, which Adel quickly seized by delivering an elbow strike to the creature's face.

Unfortunately Adel wasn't able to hit the Elite hard enough to cause any serious damage, and in retaliation, the Elite drove it's knee into Adel's stomach. As Adel keeled over, the Elite hit him in the side of his helmet with a left hook punch. The blow sent Adel flying, and he ended up sprawled out on the ground.

Head spinning, Adel was nevertheless able to understand he was still in mortal danger, so he quickly scrambled backwards on his hands and knees away from the Elite, trying to find his rifle before the alien attacked again. Strangely enough, the Elite just watched him go, and Adel found out why a moment later when his hand wrapped around the barrel of his rifle. He yanked on it, trying to bring it to bear, but his rifle refused to move and as Adel glanced back to figure out why, he realized it was because there was a Grunt standing behind him, it's foot on Adel's rifle, keeping it pinned down.

Before Adel could react, the Grunt brought it's plasma pistol down hard against Adel's face. As Adel collapsed, he could taste blood flooding his mouth.

"Wort wort!" Adel heard the Elite bark out and as Adel laid there, stunned, the Grunt thrusted it's plasma pistol into his face and prepared to pull the trigger. Adel closed his eyes.

"SAVASCHI, KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN!"

 _RATATATATA!_

Adel let out a loud shriek of alarm as someone hosed down the entire area with machine gun fire. Bullets chewed through flesh and masonry alike, some of which passed mere centimeters over Adel's head, causing him to curl up into a ball to try and protect his vitals as he waited for the barrage to end.

"Clear up!" someone yelled as the gunfire ended and Adel cracked an eye open to see both the Elite and Grunt were lying dead on the ground next to him, riddled with holes. "Clear up!"

"Clear down!" Adel hoarsely yelled back.

An entire squad of Marines poured into the alley. Leading the way was the commander of 1st Squad, Sergeant Oyler.

"Savaschi?" he called out. "What the hell are you doing here!?"

"Planting some claymore mines to cover the platoon's withdraw Sergeant," Adel responded as he shakily sat up.

"Well, forget about that! We're pulling back, now!"

"But I only got one mine down!" Adel reflexively protested. "I still got at least another two I need to place!"

"Savaschi, we are getting outflanked here!" Oyler snapped, jabbing at the rapidly cooling Covenant corpses laying on the ground. "I dunno about you, but I'm not planning on getting shot in the back! On your feet Marine and let's go!"

Without waiting for a response, Oyler grabbed Adel and yanked him to his feet. Adel's rifle was suddenly thrusted into his hands and along with Oyler, Adel stumbled down the street.

"Contact rear!" someone screamed out and more gunfire began ringing out, and Adel tried to turn his head to see what was going on, but Oyler had grabbed him by the arm and was half-dragging him down the street, preventing Adel from doing just that.

Bullets and plasma continued to whizz overhead as Oyler and Adel dove into the hole where X and Sam were waiting.

"Sergeant Oyler!" Sam yelled over the sound of X providing covering fire. "What's going on Sergeant!?"

"We're somehow getting outflanked!" Oyler yelled back. "I'm pulling my squad back before we get cut off!"

"How'd the Covies get behind us?"

"Dunno! Must be some sort of underground pedestrian tunnel or something we missed because they sure as hell didn't break through our lines!"

"I thought the Army took down all the tunnels when they blew up the subway to prevent this sort of thing from happening!?" X yelled as he ducked down to reload.

"Goddamn Army pukes can't get anything fucking right today!" Adel spat as he took X's place.

"If it wasn't connected to the subway system, then there's no way the tunnel could have gotten destroyed along with everything else!" Oyler yelled back. "Look, I got to get my squad organized! Covies are going to try and take this opportunity to push hard and we still got 3rd Squad out there on the right! We need some way to cover for them!"

"That's what we were trying to do!" Adel heard Sam protest as Oyler darted off. He was almost immediately replaced by the Doggie engineer from earlier.

"What the hell? Are we pulling back already? I thought we had more time!" Elias yelled. "How many claymores you guys get set up?"

"One," Adel grimly reported.

"One!?"

"Look asshole, you try setting up claymores when you got an Elite sniffing your ass!"

Sam whirled on him, but Elias didn't seem too bothered by Adel's lip.

"One claymore's not going to cut it!" he was saying.

"Well, what do you want us to do about it Corporal!? I'm not sending my Marines out into that mess again, not if we're falling back!" Sam retorted.

"The idea, Corporal, was to set up explosives that we could detonate after everyone pulled back so we could delay the Covenant advance long enough for everyone to resume defensive positions! We can't very well do that now, can we!? You want to fight the Covies out in the open, that's your prerogative, but I rather not!"

"Can't we achieve the same affect with artillery?"

"Smallest piece we have are the one five fives, and we are way too close for that!"

"Reloading!" Adel yelled as he ducked back down. As he ejected his mag, he happened to look up and notice the large case Elias was carrying on his back. "Hey Corporal! Can't we use that APOBS?"

Elias stared at him like he was crazy. "What for? We're trying to create an explosive obstacle, not destroy one!"

"I know! But that thing still fires a long chain of plastic explosives, the same explosives found in our claymores! We can fire it out, wait 'til the Covies walk over it, and then detonate it! Won't be a lot of shrapnel, but at that point, would it really matter?"

Both Sam and Elias stared at him.

"What?"

Sam slowly shook his head. "Well well well, guess what they say is true: a broken clock _is_ right at least twice a day!"

"I never understood that expression!" Adel retorted.

"It's for twelve hour clocks; way before your time! Look, it doesn't matter: let's get this APOBS set up! X, Adel, cover us!"

"Covering!" X immediately yelled.

Adel jammed a fresh magazine into his rifle and stood up. Marines were slowly streaming back down the street but just beyond them, Adel could see Covenant infantry emerging from the chaos.

Adel spotted one Elite Minor emerging from the smoke and even though he knew this Elite wasn't the same one, Adel couldn't help but feel like this was his opportunity to get revenge on the Elite that had punched him. Pulling the buttstock into his shoulder, Adel dropped his crosshairs over the Elite's chest and opened fire.

Brass casings littered the ground as Adel pulled the trigger as fast as he could, and even through his scope was jumping all over the place due to the recoil, Adel could still see the Elite's shields lighting up just before they disappeared completely. The Elite immediately dove for cover behind a nearby car, but because the creature didn't know where it had been taking fire from, the alien didn't realize Adel still had line of sight.

Adel felt a grin crawling onto his face as he planted his crosshairs over the Elite's head and started to pick up the slack on his trigger.

"ADEL! Get your head down!"

Startled, Adel accidently jerked his rifle upwards as he pulled the trigger, and his shot disappeared into the sky. Frantically, Adel readjusted his aim, but he couldn't find the Elite any longer, and Adel resisted the urge to start crying in frustration. How was it, despite all the fighting that had been going on non-stop for the last three hours, _he had yet to get a single kill!?_ This was not fair!

"Adel, get your fat fucking head out of the way!"

Growling, Adel nevertheless obeyed, hurriedly shuffling to side. Behind him, Sam and Elias had the APOBS all set up and ready to fire.

"Fire in the hole!" Sam screamed, before hitting the trigger.

The shriek of a rocket firing filled the air as the APOBS activated, shooting up into the air and down the street, bringing along the full thirty-five meter long line of plastic explosives with it. The mass seemed to hang in mid-air for a moment, and it seemed impossible to Adel none of the Covenant could see it and not decide to shoot it, but somehow the mine-clearing charge came crashing back to the ground where it settled, ready for the detonation signal.

"Alright, that's it!" Sam yelled. "We're ready! All Marines, fall back to secondary positions! Assault team, cover up!"

Adel propped his rifle against the edge of the crater and opened fire as Marines streamed past them. Most of the squads had already fallen back, so it didn't take long before Adel and his team were the last ones left. The Covenant were quick to take advantage of the slackening fire coming their way: emerging from whatever holes they had been hiding in, they started charging down the street hoping to run down the UNSC Marines, and very quickly Adel found himself ducking his head as more and more plasma started landing closer and closer to him.

"Uh, I don't want to unduly alarm anyone," X yelled over the increasing barrage, "but I do believe it's getting rather hot around here! Perhaps we should detonate the charges!?"

"Not yet!" Sam yelled.

Adel tried to stick his head up and fire a few shots. For his efforts, he nearly took a concussion shell to the face. "They're getting kind of close Corporal!" Adel warned.

"Hang on! Wait until there's just a bit more!"

Adel flinched as a plasma grenade detonated directly over them. "We're in grenade range now! How much fucking closer do you want them!?"

"RAAAHHHH!"

Adel looked up to see a Grunt charging at them, plasma pistol firing wildly. Before Adel could react, Elias unloaded half his magazine, tearing the creature to shreds.

"Now do it!" Sam barked. "Get your head's down everybody! Fire in the hole!"

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!"

* * *

1\. Khat is actually a real life plant native to the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula that's used as a stimulant drug. Similar to tobacco, khat is normally chewed, but when dried, it can also be smoked as well as used in tea.

2\. Evocatus is evidently another name for the Elite rank of "Ultra"

In this fiction, I'm intending it to be more like chewing tobacco rather than the drug that it's classified as.

Author's Note

*The setting for this first part might take a bit of explaining, so I'll try to break it down line by line.

 **"Covenant designated Landing Zone: Deliverance"**

I think this is pretty self-explanatory, but 'Deliverance' would be the Covenant name for their landing site. Given the naming conventions of Covenant ships, it seems to me the Covenant are big on giving their stuff grandiose and religiously themed names. So, while the UNSC gives their LZs some rather generic designations like "LZ X-Ray" of "LZ Echo," I imagine the Covenant would call them stuff like "Salvation," "Justice," or "Righteousness."

 **"Forerunner Designated World: MS 222-53 a"**

Actium is obviously the name for this planet (which is a canon colony, in case readers didn't know that; in fact, this entire battle is a canon battle, even if the finer details aren't,) but that would be the human name for it and I just don't see the Covenant knowing or even caring about that. Which led me to ask: what would the Covenant call this planet?

I remembered a conversation I had with reader: Thorthemighty321 a while back where he was asking about the composition of the Covenant invasion fleet, and essentially, the question "How did the Covenant discover this world, but not realize there was such a large human presence here already" was asked. At the time, I hadn't really thought about that, so I gave a rather generic answer of "oh, the Covenant didn't actually know about the planet, they only found out by searching through Forerunner archives." Having given it some thought though, I decided I actually like that explanation, so I decided rather than give the new planet a name, the Covenant would have simply used the Forerunner designation. (I think the Covenant will eventually rename the planet, but only after it's been purified. Which means I will eventually need to think of a name for this world. Anyone have any suggestions?)

The Forerunner designation itself was a bit tricky as there are only three Forerunner planets in canon so far that utilizes a similar naming convention: LP 656-38 e, CE-10-2165-d, and DM-3-1123-b. I'm sure in canon, the Forerunners had an entire system behind their designations (MS would perhaps designate the type of star the system was centered around perhaps, 222-53 might represent the number of astrological bodies located in the system itself or something of that nature, and I know the 'a' represented which planet in the system it was, with 'a' being the closest to the star,) but I wasn't really interested in inventing one myself, so I took a less creative path: I named the planet after my main character from _Missing in Action_.

 **"9th Age of Reclamation"**

This is the only canon thing here. The 9th Age of Reclamation is the Covenant designated period that encompasses the entire period of the Human-Covenant War.

" **6th Cycle of the Planet's Rotation"**

This last part was tricky as I wanted to give a time, but I also wanted to be different and not use "hours" and "minutes." I debated "borrowing" from other sci-fi series (like Farscape, which uses "arn" and "microt" as their designations,) but I decided I didn't like that idea and wanted to create my own (because, well, I wanted to be different. Seriously.)

It's a fairly simplistic system, I think. Using the same idea that hours are based on the time it takes for the Earth to make a full rotation on its axis, I figured the Covenant would do something similar but instead of "hours," they would call them "cycles." I figured one "cycle" would probably be equal to about three hours, and given that I decided a while back that Actium would have 36 hour days (35.5 to exact, but rounded up; yes, this seemed like a good idea at the time; no, it turns out it really wasn't,) that means on the Covenant clock, Actium has twelve "cycles."

What about minutes and seconds you ask? Well, I'm glad you asked because I haven't actually thought that far ahead. So... yeah...

And that's it for the Covenant designations.

General Notes

As for the entire first part involving the Covenant, that's intended to tie-in with chapter 4 of _Missing in Action._ For those who do not recall, in Chapter 4 of _MIA,_ our protagonist ended up calling down a submarine-launched missile strike on a Covenant base that had been established inside a museum. I thought it would be fun, now that I've got some Covenant characters to show a little bit of the aftermath of said strike.

As for the human the Grunts were torturing, he is in fact one of those characters from _MIA_ , abet, not of the major ones. His name will be revealed later in this story, but for those of you who are curious, it's Doc Puck Falco, the combat medic that had been assigned to assist Moss and his squad (sort of.) If you read the beginning of _MIA_ chapter 5, you might notice that Doc Falco had mysteriously disappeared. Again, just thought it might be fun to slightly expand on his ultimate fate.

Anyways, as always, many thanks to my editor, _**Darkfire7881.**_ If you guys haven't checked out his stuff yet, I highly recommend it. He writes a lot of _Command & Conquer_ fanfiction so if you guys are a fan of that game, then he's the man to check out.


	28. Chapter 28

**Chapter 28**

 **Low Orbit, Actium  
May 6, 2645  
1830**

 **Zelda**

Zelda abruptly jerked awake at the soft chime his HUD let out to inform him his fuel tanks were full. That wasn't what bothered him. What bother him was the fact he didn't remember falling asleep in the first place. Which meant the energy drink he had downed about an hour ago had finally been flushed out of his system. And seeing as how that had been his last one, he was now officially shit out of luck.

Adjusted himself as best as he could in his confined seat, Zelda groaned and slapped himself across his visor, trying his best to shake off his exhaustion. Ever since that Covenant battlecruiser had been blown up by some mysterious force, a stalemate had emerged in orbit. At least, that's what _some_ people would have called it, but not Zelda. Because while all the warships were keeping their distance, watching each other like hawks but making sure not engage each other, all the small craft like Zelda's squadron of Broadswords were very much active. Undergoing reconnaissance operations, providing dropship escorts, fighting off Covenant probing attacks, and just in general, staying active so some General could hold a press conference and say with a straight face they were doing something, for the last six or seven hours Zelda had been fighting almost non-stop. He was reaching his breaking point, but in Zelda's opinion, the worst part was how little support they were getting from the Command.

Take this refueling center for example. It wasn't even a military one, but a civilian one because Command "didn't want to risk another aircraft carrier by moving it out of position." That was all good and all, but as this civilian platform wasn't designed for military use, refueling the entire squadron, as depleted as it was, was taking forever. Furthermore, for obvious reasons, there was no way for Zelda to rearm while he got refueled. At this point, Zelda was completely out of munitions for his external hardpoints. It wasn't the worst thing in the world as Zelda's internal reserves were still full, however it was just another sign of how much Zelda and his squadron were getting screwed over.

 _"Sir? You're full. Please detach and move out of the way for the next plane."_

Zelda felt a massive surge of anger abruptly well up in him.

"I'll take as much fucking time as I want you fucking prick!" he snapped.

Unfortunately for him, in his exhaustion, Zelda forgot to hit the talk button on his radio and as a result, his intended recipient, the fuel attendant, didn't hear him. By the time Zelda realized that, a Marine Pelican gunship was already maneuvering in and not wanting his fighter to get hit by a bunch of fucking jarheads, Zelda activated his thrusters and moved out of the way.

Angling his fighter in the direction his squadron was gathering, Zelda sat there, fuming.

 _"Zelda."_

Zelda growled and was half tempted to ignore the call on his radio, but he knew if he did that, Odessa would just keep calling him. With a reluctant sigh, Zelda hit his talk button.

"What." he said bluntly.

 _"Eat an energy bar."_

"...what?"

 _"I can practically hear your teeth grinding from here,"_ Odessa explained. _"You get all pissy when you're hungry, so go eat something."_

" _You_ go eat an energy bar," Zelda snapped back. "I'm not pissy because I'm hungry, I'm pissy because I'm freaking tired."

" _Well, that's to be expected,"_ Odessa cheerfully replied and Zelda could practically hear him shrug his shoulders. " _That's what happens when you don't get a full night's rest. Should have told your, ah, 'bed companion' to leave you alone."_

"Hey! I'll have you know **I** was the one keeping her up, not the other way around!"

" _And… somehow that makes it better?"_

"Yeah! It uh… I mean…" Zelda started to sputter as he realized he didn't actually know what he had meant.

"… _you have no idea where you were going with that, did you?"_

"Shut up."

" _See? Lack of sleep will get you every time,"_ Odessa teased.

" _All Omega pilots, rally on me."_

"Yeah?" Zelda retorted as he ignited his thrusters and started to head over to where Bellum was. "Well, we can't all be sniffing glue to stay awake like you do."

All Odessa did was snort in amusement.

As he flew to the rallying point, Zelda couldn't help but feel a bit grateful Odessa was around. All of their banter served more of a purpose than simple fun: it was actually helping Zelda wake up, though, unfortunately, not completely. As Zelda pulled to a stop near Bellum, he let out a loud yawn as he waited to see what their next bullshit assignment was going to be.

 _"Okay guys, hope you're all awake because you're going to want to be alert for this next part,"_ Bellum declared as soon as everyone had arrived. _"So, here's the situation: apparently some ground unit was able to make contact with Command and request an evac for a whole ton of civilians. Command has agreed and is sending in some Pelicans. But here's the thing: evacuation site in the middle of Covenant occupied territory."_

 _"A bunch of civilians were able to survive this long behind enemy lines?"_ Odessa asked, surprised.

 _"Apparently."_

"That sounds fishy as fuck," Zelda immediately interjected. "We sure this is a legitimate call?"

 _"It's actually not as unusual as you might think,"_ Bellum pointed out. _"You have to remember, planetside invasions are chaotic as hell already and that's before you throw in local resistance, unknown terrain, etc. Between establishing a beachhead, landing enough troops to hold said beachhead, and building up enough supplies for the subsequent operation, it can be hard to ensure a landing site that's a hundred percent secured. It's not entirely unfeasible that a bunch of civilians, especially those under military escort, could have found a safe zone, even behind enemy lines."_

 _"All any case,"_ Bellum continued, _"this is all a moot point. Command had the same concerns as you guys did, and thus made the caller confirm his identity. Apparently commander in charge down there is some 'Colonel Menteith' with the UNSC Army. Whoever he is, he must have been able to establish his identity to Command's satisfaction because they're sending in a squadron of Pelicans to extract those civilians, and we've been tapped to escort them in. Buckle up your seatbelts ladies and gentlemen and say goodbye to space; we've already got the head's up. Once we reenter the atmosphere, we're staying there."_

That made Zelda sit up straighter. So. They were finally returning to the planet. He'd been wondering if that was going to happen anytime soon. Of course he knew what that meant: lots and lots of close air support missions. Good. As much as Zelda enjoyed showing off his flying skills, he could use a break where all he had to do was pick off helpless Covenant ground targets.

 _"Eject all external hardpoints,"_ Bellum command, _"and follow me in. We're going to rendezvous with the Pelicans first before going in."_

Zelda bobbed his head. Accessing his control panel, Zelda hit a few keys and a message appeared on his HUD.

 _'Eject external stores. Y/N?'_

Zelda hit the 'Y' button and as soon as he confirm the order, a slight _clung_ noise filled his ears, and Zelda glanced out through both sides of his cockpit window to see his external weapon stations ejecting off the top and bottom surfaces of his wings and floating away where they would either eventually burn up in the atmosphere, or join the ever growing cloud of debris floating in orbit around the planet.

Careful not to accidently fly into any of his comrades' hardpoints, Zelda followed Bellum as she led them in the direction of the rally point. In the distance, Zelda could already see a number of Air Force Pelicans gathering.

 _"Omega Flight to Pelicans rendezvousing at location one niner six Alpha in sector thirty-seven: are you guys Blizzard?"_ Bellum smoothly asked over the radio.

 _"Omega Flight, that is an affirmative. Are you our escort, over?"_

 _"Affirmative. Blizzard, our orders are to escort you in to Landing Zone Echo where you will evacuate over four hundred civilians and soldiers from Covenant controlled territory, and then cover you as you withdraw back to orbit. Can you confirm, over?"_

 _"Confirmed,"_ came Blizzard' immediate reply. _"We're going to need a lot of cover because, in order to evacuate that many civilians, all Pelicans within this squadron have been reequipped with troop deployment pods. In orbit, that's not really a problem but within atmosphere, that's going to reduce our speed and maneuverability considerably, over."_

"Shit, they should have gotten another squadron to do this," Zelda muttered under his breath as he counted the number of Pelicans there were: a full squadron of twelve. Unfortunately, at this point in the day, Zelda's squadron had been reduced to a grand total of _six_ Broadswords.

 _"Understood Blizzard,"_ Bellum nevertheless said. _"We'll put three Broadswords in front to clear the way, three Broadswords at the rear to cover your six. Just maintain your formation up until we reach the LZ, and we should be okay, over."_

 _"Copy that Omega,"_ came the reply. _"Ready when you are."_

 _"Roger. Moving now, break. Okay, listen up Omega! Omega Leader and Omegas 5 and 6 will lead the way! Omegas 3, 9, and 12, provide rear security. Clock is ticking so let's move it out guys."_

 _"On you Leader,"_ Odessa announced.

In lieu of a verbal response, Zelda clicked his talk button.

The engines on Bellum's engines abruptly flared and she started heading down towards the planet. Waiting a few seconds so as to acquire the proper amount of spacing, Odessa and Zelda soon followed and together, all three Broadswords headed towards Actium.

As the one-man fighters began their descent through the upper atmosphere and the density of the space surrounding their aircraft began to increase, so too did the friction against their hull. Zelda gritted his teeth as his Broadsword steadily began to rattle and shake, and the outer layer of his hull began to glow with heat. As soon as he had begun his reentry, Zelda's onboard computer had automatically mapped out a descent trajectory, one that would prevent his fighter from shaking itself apart and disintegrating in the atmosphere, but unfortunately there was no way to prevent all the turbulence. That's actually why they had to eject their hardpoints as any ordnance still attached wouldn't have survive the reentry, and the last thing Zelda would have wanted was a bomb stuck to his wing that could potentially go off at any second.

 _"Two minutes before we reach optimal flight altitude,"_ Bellum announced over the radio.

Zelda absentmindedly nodded his head as he fought to keep his fighter steady. This was, in his opinion, the worst part about his job: atmospheric reentry. Even with modern technology, reentry was always tricky, and every year, dozens of spacecraft all around the galaxy simply fell apart in the atmosphere due to one reason or another.

The one good thing was that it _did_ cause Zelda to wake up completely, so he was at least appreciative of that.

 _"Ninety seconds,"_ Bellum declared. _"Switching radios over to localized channels. Standby."_

There was a mute _click_ in Zelda's headset, and then all of a sudden, his radio was being flooded with calls.

" _Rover-3 to all Rover units!"_ someone was screaming. " _Havoc-3 is down, I say again, I've lost my tank support! I've a got a Hunter and three dozen Covenant infantry closing in on my position, I need help, NOW!"_

"Hey!" Zelda called out over the squadron's dedicated channel. "Is that from the LZ?"

"Sounds like it, doesn't it?" Odessa commented. _"Hang on, I'm checking now... yeah, that's from the LZ._ _ **Our**_ _LZ."_

"Well, that's great then," Zelda exclaimed.

 _"It sounds like they're about to be overrun Zelda. How is that great!?"_

"Now we get to swoop in at the last second and save the day," Zelda pointed out. "Be some big damn heroes for once."

Odessa sighed. _"Of course that's what you'd be thinking about."_

 _"Guys, focus!"_ Bellum snapped. _"I'm picking up contacts on my sensors. Looks like... okay, I got a lock on two Covenant Hunters closing in on the LZ! It looks like it's going to be danger close. Zelda, prep a missile: I'm going to go for the closest one with guns, you drop the far one with that missile! Clear?"_

"Got it," Zelda replied as he armed a missile.

 _"Okay, here we go... GUNS GUNS GUNS!"_

Bellum abruptly disappeared underneath some clouds, so Zelda wasn't able to visual see her strafing run but as he emerged from the clouds himself, he could see the results: a couple hundred meters directly below him, there was an entire mass of Covenant soldiers, of which, the Hunters were easy to pick out. One of the Hunters was laying on the ground, massive holes having been punched right through its body. The other...

"Rifle(1) away!" Zelda warned as he instantly locked onto the remaining Hunter and fired. His bomb bay doors automatically opened, and Zelda could hear the _thunk_ of a missile getting released, as well as a steady light appearing in his HUD indicating a successful munitions detachment.

Looking out of his cockpit window, he looked out just in time to see as his missile's engines ignite, before the missile plummeted down to the ground at near supersonic speeds and slam into the remaining Hunter, which exploded into ludicrous gibs.

At that sight, Zelda could see the remaining Covenant infantry immediately withdrawing.

"Scratch one Hunter!" Zelda cheered.

 _"Rover-3, this is Omega Flight,"_ Bellum announces over the radio. " _Heard you boys could use a hand."_

" _Omega Flight, this is Rover-3 Actual,"_ Rover immediately replied and in the background, Zelda could hear someone cheering. _"If you were on the ground right now, I would kiss you. You just saved our bacons."_

To Zelda's immense surprise, Bellum started laughing.

" _Save the kiss and buy us a case a beer, then we'll call it even,"_ she replied. _"Hey, we'll mop things up here, you boys get washed up for supper. Your chariots are inbound."_

Zelda glanced over his shoulder in Bellum's direction, doubly surprised. Was she _flirting_ with this guy? He had never heard her do that before and honestly, he had starting to think she didn't have it within her.

Before Zelda could comment on it though, Odessa suddenly spoke up.

 _"Leader, this is 5: be advised, I'm picking up signatures of inbound Banshees on my radar. ETA, one mike!"_ Odessa warned.

" _Better make it quick though,"_ Bellum quickly warned over the radio. _"We've got a squadron of Banshees inbound and they are_ _ **pissed**_ _. This flight corridor ain't going to remain secured for long, over."_

 _"Copy!"_

There was another click and Zelda could hear Bellum switching channels.

 _"Omega Leader to Blizzard. Be advised, LZ is cleared for now, but not for long: we're picking up inbound Banshee squadrons. Get those civilians out of here, break. Omega 3, we still have Covenant infantry picking at the edge of the LZ. Move in with your flight and engage, break! Odessa, Zelda, on me, we're going to slow down those Banshees!"_

Zelda grabbed his yoke and banked in the direction of the incoming Banshees, but truth be told, his mind was on something else.

Switching his radio over to Bellum's channel, he slyly asked, "So Bellum, you like ground pounders, do you?"

 _"Now's not really the time Zelda,"_ Bellum distractedly replied.

"Just sayin': you were totally flirting with that guy."

That seemed to catch Bellum's attention.

 _"No I wasn't,"_ she insisted.

"Yeahhhh..." Zelda dragged out. "You totally were..."

Bellum sighed. _"Link, you think it's possible for you to focus on the task at hand?"_ she replied, though Zelda could pick up the barest hint of embarrassment in her voice.

Zelda grinned in triumph. Her reaction was all he needed. Now he had something he could tease her more in the future with.

"Copy that ma'am," was all he said before switching back to the general channel. "I'm getting a reading: Banshees are in range!"

 _"Standby to volley fire on my command,"_ Bellum immediately barked and Zelda hastily began arming missiles. _"Fire!"_

"Fox three!" Zelda announced as he pulled the trigger, and three missiles were launched from his Broadsword towards the Covenant in rapid succession.

As the Banshees were still at beyond visual ranges, their Covenant pilots had plenty of time to detect the incoming missiles and take appropriate measures. As a result, most of the missiles missed, but at the very least it forced the Covenant to break formation, slowing them down and buying Blizzard more time.

Thinking of Blizzard, Zelda glanced behind him. Already one Pelican was beginning to take off, which was good.

 _"Second volley,"_ Bellum barked. _"Get ready... fire!"_

Zelda fired once more. As this time the Banshees were just a bit closer, the missiles had more of an effect and through his sensors, Zelda could see at least one Banshee going down in flames.

 _"Blizzard, this is Omega Leader: you might want to consider picking up the pace some,"_ Bellum warned over the radio.

 _"Understood Leader, but we're working as fast as we can!"_

Bellum didn't bother with a reply. _"Leader to Omega 3, sitrep?"_

 _"LZ is secured: all infantry have been mopped up."_

 _"Form up as a second wave and be prepared to follow us in. Blizzard needs more time, and we're not going to be able to stop all these Banshees."_

 _"Copy."_

Zelda glanced at his rear scopes. More and more Pelicans were quickly rising up from the ground, but there was still at least a quarter of them getting loaded.

 _"5 and 6, prepare to engage with short ranged missiles,"_ Bellum ordered.

 _"Incoming!"_ Odessa suddenly yelled as the Banshees abruptly opened up with their fuel rod cannons.

"Chaff," Zelda spat as he casually jerked his stick to the side and dodged the first few fuel rods. "Fox one!"

A missile spat out from underneath his Broadsword once more, but this time the Banshees were close enough Zelda could see the explosion that lit up the sky. As expected though, such a loss hardly deterred the Covenant as they continued to charge in for the kill.

 _"Alright guys, this is it,"_ Bellum announced, and Zelda could hear her breathing rather heavily. _"Get ready for a knife fight and try to remember we're fighting within the atmosphere."_

Zelda gave a start. He had, actually, momentarily forgotten that they were in atmosphere and with the reminder, he found himself grinning like an idiot. This was going to interesting.

While in space, due to lack of stuff like 'friction' and 'drag,' Banshees were highly mobility fighting platforms able to dodge and weave with the grace of a ballerina. But within the atmosphere of a planet, the dynamic was flipped and it would be Broadswords who, due to their higher surface area which allowed for more lift, had the maneuvering advantage.

 _"Standby to split on my mark. Standby... execute!"_

Zelda peeled away from Bellum and Odessa. Almost immediately, the Banshees were on top of them to fill in the gaps and Zelda was instantly confronted with a trio of Banshees, plasma cannons blazing.

"Fox one!" Zelda blurted out as he fired a snap shot at one of the Banshees. The Covie tried to dodge but at this distance, there simply was no time and the Banshee took the missile head on and exploded. One of the other Banshees banked to the left, hard, to avoid the explosion, temporarily leaving Zelda with only one Banshee to contend with.

"Guns!" he snapped and pulled the trigger. He could feel his autocannons popping out of their gun ports and he could hear them, yes, hear them because he was now inside the atmosphere of a planet, as they fired.

 _ **BOOMBOOMBOOM!**_

His first salvo missed as the Banshee threw itself into a barrel roll and shot right passed Zelda, but Zelda was content to let him go as he was confronted with the third Banshee. Holding down his trigger, Zelda blasted away at the new target, but his aim was off and all Zelda could do was score a glancing blow off the left stabilization of the Banshee, leaving a decent sized crack.

The Banshee pilot immediately banked to the right to try and get out of Zelda's line of sight and normally such a move would have worked, but the Elite pilot must have forgotten where he was. Because while conducting such an intensive maneuver with a slightly damaged wing like that was hardly lethal in space, inside a planet's atmosphere where there was drag and friction, the stress applied to an aircraft's frame was greatly amplified, especially at the speeds they were traveling at. And a Banshee's airframe was designed for mass production and speed and _not_ survivability...

Zelda watched as the Banshee's left stabilizer shearing off as the stress of trying to execute a ninety degree turn at near supersonic speeds proved too much for the Banshee's frame. With only one anti-gravity pod left, the Banshee was sent spiraling to the ground and just as he flew past, Zelda thought he could see the Banshee finally explode, but at that point Zelda was no longer paying attention as he was being confronted with a fresh trio of Banshees.

They came screaming in at top speeds, plasma cannon's blazing, and Zelda threw himself into a spin as he tried to minimize his frontal profile. Obtaining a lock on the two outermost Banshees, rather than fire right away, Zelda punched in his afterburners and launched his Broadsword at the incoming enemy. Not having expected such a move, the Banshees reflexively scattered, but as the two factions whipped passed each other, Zelda abruptly extended his air brakes, dropping his sped from over a thousand to less than a couple hundred.

"GAHHH!" Zelda screamed in pain as the g-force slammed into his body, and he could almost swear his lungs were about collapse, but it was completely worth it as he was now behind the three Banshees. "Fox one!"

Two more missiles departed from under his Broadsword and two more explosions lit up the sky. The third Banshee promptly threw himself into a dive to try and juke what he thought would have been Zelda's next missile, but Zelda hadn't even tried locking onto him. Instead, Zelda started climbing, seeing a number of Banshees passing by overhead at a much higher altitude.

As he closed in on his targets, Zelda could hear someone saying over the general comms, _"Colonel! Colonel, get your men aboard! We have to leave, right now!"_

Locking onto a Banshee, Zelda thumbed his trigger, blowing a series of holes right through the Banshee, practically cutting it in half. The Banshee exploded, causing a large amount of debris plummeting to the ground below and forcing Zelda to throw himself into a loop of avoid getting hit.

 _"No, that's alright,"_ Zelda heard someone reply. " _We're going to stay. I'm in the mood to cause some trouble for these Covenant sons of bitches. And, with any luck, we'll draw some patrols away from your path Major Volkov. Blizzard 6-1, get those civilians to safety. That's all that matters at this point."_

"Does some of that trouble include providing some SAM support!?" Zelda wondered out loud to himself as he dodged a fuel rod cannon that had been fired in his direction. In the background, Zelda could hear the Pelican pilots saying, _"Copy that. Good luck Colonel."_

 _Colonel?_

Zelda briefly wondered if this was that Colonel Menteith Bellum had been talking about earlier, but then he decided he didn't care enough to find out.

 _"Omega Flight, this is Blizzard: last Pelican is taking off right now, over."_

 _"Copy that!"_ came Bellum's strained reply. _"All Omega Flight pilots, break contact and make sure those Banshees don't try to follow the Pelicans!"_

Firing one last missile at a Banshee he had locked on, Zelda yanked back on his yoke and sent himself shooting upwards, back towards the upper atmosphere. He could see a fuel rod cannon chasing him in his wake that had been fired at max range, but not being in space, the fuel rod cannon also had to contend against gravity and it quickly lost all its energy, causing it to safely self-destruct in a violent green flash nearly a hundred meters away from Zelda.

Spotting a flight of Banshees closing in on the Pelicans from the rear, Zelda maneuvered to intercept. Another Broadsword joined him, and Zelda glanced over his shoulder to see that it was Odessa.

"Hey buddy!" Zelda cheerfully greeted.

 _"You ever notice how morbid it sounds to hear you being so cheerful when you're killing things?"_ Odessa immediately noted. _"Almost makes you sound like a psychopath."_

"What can I say?" Zelda replied with a shrug. "Every Covenant soldier I kill now potentially means one more civilian saved further down the line, you know?"

 _"That's a fair point,"_ Odessa allowed. _"So... who do you want to kill first?"_

Zelda regarded the Banshees in front of him. "Can't use missiles because they're too close to the Pelicans. Let's go for the rear and work our way to the front," he decided. "Like turkey hunting: you don't want to take out the leader cause then it'd just scare the rest of the flock."

 _"Not sure it works the same way but what the hell,"_ Odessa said. _"I don't hunt."_

"Cool. Follow me in!"

Zelda quickly studied the scene in front of him. The three Banshees had open fired on the rear most Pelican, and the Pelican was returning fire with its nose mounted cannon, trying to drive the Banshees off, but obviously a cargo ship had no chance against a dedicated warplane. Still, the Pelican's fire did have the benefit of distracting the Banshee pilots' from Zelda's approach. As long he didn't trying to obtain a missile lock on them...

Zelda fired. The Banshee was sitting at the very edge of Zelda's maximum effective range for his main cannons, and thus his first few rounds failed to do much more than bounce off the Banshee's armor. Fortunately, Odessa has waited a few seconds before firing and as a result, his rounds were fired that much closer, enough to actually penetrate.

Flames shot out from the top of the Banshee's hull and it immediately plummeted from the sky, possibly because Odessa has managed to kill the pilot. Whatever the case was, the other two Banshees noticed the loss of their friend immediately, and scattered.

" _So much for shooting the last one in the line!"_ Odessa yelled.

"So they're not exactly turkeys!" Zelda yelled back as he jerked his stick to try and keep the Banshees in sight. "But hey, at least they're not chasing after the Pelicans!"

" _Yeah? And how does that help us?"_

"Means we can do this!" Zelda armed a missile. "Fox one!"

Zelda blinked as his target disintegrate into one massive fireball, leaving the remaining Banshee to try and flee as fast as possible. He slowly lined up his shot, but then paused.

"Hey Vinnie! I don't suppose you want this one?" he asked.

In response, Odessa ignited his afterburners and shot in front of Zelda and began lining up his shot. No doubt picking the move up on his sensors, the Banshee pilot threw himself into a barrel roll, slowing himself to near stall speed in an effort to evade any locks as well as try and get Zelda and Odessa to overshoot him, but it didn't work as Odessa was able to easily match the Banshee move for move. Rather than expend a missile, Odessa fired a single shot with his main cannons, hitting the Banshee's fuel rod cannon and causing it to explode.

The Banshee immediately erupted into flames, and as the crippled aircraft began its downward death spiral, the canopy abruptly burst open and Zelda could see the Elite pilot leaping out. Zelda tapped his yoke and angled his fighter towards the Elite, but the alien threw itself into a superman dive, and just barely managed to avoid getting run over by Zelda's heavy fighter.

Zelda was half tempted to turn around and try again, but seeing as he hadn't seen a parachute on the Elite, he figured there would be no point as the Elite was no longer a threat. Especially since he was picking up more Banshees closing in on his position from below…

"Odessa! We got more Banshees inbound!" Zelda started to say when –

 _CLANG!_

Zelda flinched as a blue plasma bolt splattered against his cockpit window. All it did was leave a burn mark behind, indicating it hadn't been fired by a Banshee as a direct hit like that would have cracked his canopy open, but Zelda couldn't figure out where it had come from until he glanced at his rear scopes and spotted that damn Elite, hovering in mid-air due to the jump pack it was wearing, with its plasma rifle in hand firing non-stop at Zelda's Broadsword, as if such a small weapon could knock him out of the sky.

" _Man, that Elite really likes you, doesn't he?"_ Odessa commented.

"Fucking dumbass aliens never give up, do they?" Zelda snarled. Normally, that would have been a cause for respect but right now, that was just pissing Zelda off.

" _You want me to take him or do you - ?"_ Odessa asked as the Elite continued uselessly firing on the two fighters.

In response, Zelda yanked back on his yoke and threw himself into a wingover. As he leveled out, Zelda could see the Elite priming a plasma grenade and rather than risk his damage to his fighter, Zelda simply open fired with his main cannons.

 _BOOMBOOMBOOM!_

There was a _puff_ and a small cloud of dark purple liquid appeared in mid-air as the Elite took one of the 35mm rounds straight to the chest.

"Could have made it down to the surface and lived to fight another day but nooo, just had to shoot at me," Zelda muttered under his breath. "Fucking idiot."

" _Omega Flight, this is Blizzard: be advised, we're free and clear. Bayonet Squadron is being routed to cover us the rest of the way. Thanks for the assist!"_

 _"Copy!"_ came Bellum's replied. _"Leader to all Omega Flight pilots: mission accomplished! Break contact and fall back to rally point Juliet!"_

 _"Leader this is 12: I'm picking up more incoming Banshees passing through the rally point right now!"_

 _"What!? Copy I see them! Uh, give me a second!"_

Zelda glanced at his radar to see an entirely new squadron of Banshees flying in from the East and closing in fast.

 _"Okay, leader to Omega Flight, new orders! Break contact, go low low and reassemble at rally point Kilo! I say again, rally point Kilo! Flanker Squadron is standing by to provide us cover!"_

Zelda didn't bother waiting for Bellum to repeat her orders. He immediately threw himself into an inverted loop. As much as Zelda wouldn't mind sticking around, with the arrival of Covenant reinforcements, the Broadswords were getting increasingly outnumbered here.

Going from loop straight into a dive, Zelda was confronted with the sight of a flight of Banshees swiftly rising up to greet him. They fired first, filling the air with all sorts of plasma bolts. Zelda juked and weaved and started doing all sorts of rolls in an effort to dodge, all the while he continued plummeting to the earth. As he continued to dive at top speeds, he thumbed the trigger to his autocannons, trying to score a hit on one of the Banshees but while his evasive maneuvers were preventing the Banshees from hitting _him_ , they were also prevent Zelda from hitting _them_.

In the end, it hardly mattered though as, as soon as Zelda got within a couple hundred meters, the Banshees reflexively scattered, clearing the way for him to shoot right past them without much issue. As he roared by, he glanced through his rear scopes and he could see the Banshees hurriedly looping around to pursue but by then, Zelda was already gone.

Glancing at his altimeter, Zelda watched as the numbers rapidly tick down.

 _"WARNING: COLLISION ALERT. WARNING: COLLISION ALERT,"_ his computer began chiming and Zelda glanced around him.

According to his altimeter, he was still nearly three hundred meters above sea level, and should have been far from coming close to hitting anything, but there was a large cloud bank in front of him that was blocking his view of the ground and Zelda trusted his sensors.

Yanking back on his yoke, Zelda began pulling out of his dive. He found himself gasping for air as the force of trying to pull up at those speeds pushed him hard against his seat, and he could hear his Broadsword groaning from all the stress, but fortunately his aircraft managed to hold together.

Plummeting through the clouds, Zelda emerged on the other side to see -

"SON OF A BITCH!"

Zelda yanked his yoke to the side and just barely managed to avoid flying right into the skyscraper at Mach 3. He wasn't sure when the fight had returned to the skies over the city of Byzas, but evidently it had at some point as he found himself passing right over the city.

He had been too distracted earlier to bother paying attention but now that he had a moment, Zelda took the opportunity to tilt his Broadsword to the side so he could look around.

The city, which as far as he had been aware, was the epicenter of the Covenant landing site and it showed. Fires were raging all over the place and the entire city was blanketed with smoke. Numerous skyscrapers had been destroyed and knocked over, and entire blocks had been leveled. In fact, from up here, Zelda could almost see a pattern to the destruction: lines of wreckage wiggling all over the city like veins, all of which were emerging from one specific crater located within the southern half of the city. It was almost like as if there had been a series of tunnels that had been dug underneath the city, and then allowed to collapse, undermining the foundations of many a skyscraper and causing them to collapse.

At the speeds Zelda was traveling at, it was extremely difficult for him to make out any of the details from the streets below, but even up here he could see the fight was still raging. He could just barely make out the blue and green flashes of plasma fire, with bright red-orange tracer rounds behind fired in response. Glancing at his HUD, Zelda suddenly realized why he was able to see all this: at the moment, he was flying directly above and parallel to the frontlines, with the Covenant invasion force to his right, and UNSC forces to his left.

 _"One hell of a mess, ain't it?"_

Zelda glanced over his shoulder. For some reason, he hadn't realized Odessa had joined him in his dive and was currently flying just off to his left and slightly behind.

"And this is why I'm a freaking fighter pilot, and not a damn grunt," Zelda declared. "No way would I want to be one of those suckers down there."

 _"Certainly get a better view from up here,"_ Odessa replied.

Before Zelda could comment that wasn't what he meant, his master caution unexpectedly went off, and Zelda threw his Broadsword into a roll to the right. Seconds later, a fuel rod cannon passed right through the space he'd been occupying moments ago.

 _"Contact, three Banshees coming from above!"_ Odessa barked out a warning. _"I don't got visual, but I'm picking them on radar!"_

Zelda glanced over his shoulder as the three Banshees plummeted from above the cloud cover some distance behind him. One of the Banshees promptly exploded as it collided with the same building Zelda himself had only just barely managed to avoid, but that still left two Banshees.

"Yeah, I see them! Two Banshees, closing in on our six!" Zelda warned.

 _"Those weren't the ones I was talking about!"_

Zelda felt his eyes widen in horror and he banked _hard_ to the right. Moments later, three _more_ Banshees plummeted out from the cloud cover and began chasing after Zelda.

 _"Watch out Zelda, the Banshees have separated us!"_ Odessa warned as Zelda broke away further from Odessa to try and obtain some room to maneuver. _"We're not going to be in a position to support each other!"_

"Yeah, I know, but what else is new!?" Zelda yelled back as he entered into an aileron roll to try and avoid the plasma getting thrown his way. "Fall back to the rally point, maybe we can get some support there!"

 _"See if you can't pass over the Covenant controlled side of the city, that way if any of those Banshees miss, they'll be hitting their own friendlies on the ground!"_

"'If' the damn Banshees miss? What do you take me for, a damn amateur?" Zelda muttered to himself. Obviously, there was no response and Zelda accelerated as the air behind began to fill up with plasma bolts.

As he sped over the city, Zelda tried to think of a way to lose his pursuers. He could try to fly through the city, but that was insanely risky, even for him, and chances were high it just wouldn't work as all the Banshees needed to do was fly higher and shoot directly downwards, and eventually they would get him simply because there would be no place for Zelda to go. None of his usual tricks would work either: he couldn't fly backwards as that didn't work inside an atmosphere and because of gravity, his usual method of dumping a bomb or a missile behind him and hoping the Banshees were stupid enough to fly close enough to get hit by the explosion was also out of the question as all ordnance he dropped would simply fall straight to the ground.

"How do I keep finding myself in these situations!?" Zelda exclaimed. A plasma bolt passed right over his cockpit. "Shit! Forcing me to use the oldest trick in the book, huh? Fine! Be that way!"

He jammed down on his accelerator. If he couldn't outmaneuver his pursuers, then maybe he could outrun them instead.

The city outside started becoming a blur before disappearing completely as Zelda found himself quickly leaving the city limits. Here, he could see even more fighting as he reached the southernmost limit of the Covenant's expansion, but he wasn't given much time to look around as his master alarm began sounding.

 _"WARNING, INCOMING MISSILE."_

"Flares," Zelda spat, and flares began shooting out in all directions as he rolled. The fuel rod cannon started going for one of the flares, before locking onto something else, and took off in the direction of the ground. Zelda could only hope that it would something of the Covenant's and not the UNSC.

 _ **FWOOZFWOOZ BANG!**_

 _BEEPBEEPBEEP!_

Zelda jerked forward in his seat as something hit the rear of his Broadsword, triggering all sorts of alarms. His eyes flicked up to his HUD as both the master caution and fire warning on his instrument panel lit up.

"Damage report," he spat out, and an orthographic projection of his Broadsword appeared in his eyes before an inset of his engines appeared. His two auxiliary engines were both highlighted in red; a plasma bolt had scored a direct hit right between the two engines, burned through the armor, and severed the fuel line, causing a flameout.

The loss of his auxiliary engines wasn't too terribly tragic as they were only really used for when he needed to go to orbit, but it just went to show just how close the Banshees were getting. Sooner or later, they would hit something more vital, like his main engines. Or his cockpit. He needed some way of losing his pursuers. But what?

 _"Omega Flight, this is Flanker: be advised, we are inbound, your location, three minutes."_

That could work.

Zelda keyed his mic, cutting Bellum off before she could respond.

"This is Omega-6 to any Flanker pilots in the AO," he said as calmly as he could. "I got three Bandits on my six and that I can't shake. I could use some assistance, over."

 _"Okay Omega-6, we read you,"_ Flanker smoothly replied. _"We got eyes on your location. Turn to oh five, we'll cover for you."_

"Copy. I'm inbound, hot."

Dodging another fuel rod cannon, Zelda sped off in the direction Flanker had indicated. In the distance, blue dots representing Flanker began appearing on the edges of his long range sensors as he approached their position. If Zelda had seen Flanker, no doubt the Covenant had also so Zelda glanced at his rear scopes to see how they responded. Two of the Banshees on his tail had broken off and in the distance, Zelda could just barely make out the sight of all the Banshee squadrons in the area reforming in order to confront the new threat.

One Banshee, however, stayed dogfastedly on his tail, firing so many plasma bolts the Elite's cannons were beginning to overheat.

 _"Omega-6, status?"_

"Two of the Banshees broke off, but I still got one on my ass," Zelda reported.

 _"Okay, hang on. Omega-6, I'm going to try something. I'm going to fire a missile at you, but I'm going to need you to not break away until I tell you. Don't move until I say! Understood, over?"_

"Got it," Zelda replied, instantly picking up on what Flanker was trying to do.

 _"Copy. Here goes nothing. Fox three!"_

On his radar, Zelda could see a single dot rapidly departing from Flanker's position and closing in fast on his. His control panel lit up with warnings as it picked up the incoming missile.

 _"WARNING, INCOMING MISSILE,"_ his computer chimed.

"I know! Shut up!" Zelda yelled as he tried to split his attention between the incoming missile, and the Banshee still raining fire down on him from behind. It wasn't easy, and the plasma fire was getting dangerously close.

Zelda glanced at his rear scopes, wondering why the Banshee hadn't pulled off yet. Surely the pilot had detected the incoming missile?

 _"Omega-6... standby... almost there..."_ Flanker recited over the radio. Zelda glanced at his HUD. Thirty seconds to impact. _"Omega-6, BREAK LEFT!"_

Zelda jammed his stick to the left, rolling out of the path of the missile. At the same time, in a move that left even Zelda mildly impressed, the Banshee that had been behind him yanked back hard on his stick and nearly did a ninety degree turn upwards on the spot, shooting straight up just as Flanker's missile came screaming in. Zelda could see the missile start to arch skyward as it tried to track the Banshee, but missiles were nowhere as maneuverable as fighters were and at that close distance, there wasn't enough time for the missile to turn. Nor was the missile close enough to the Banshee for the warhead to detonate.

The missile shot past underneath the Banshee, missing the Covenant fighter by a good three or four meters. As it flew by, it was at least able to reacquire its lock on the Banshee, and started to make a wide U-turn, when the Banshee promptly blasted the missile out of the sky with its plasma cannons.

"Oh, come on!" Zelda groaned as the Banshee started to turn back in his direction. "Are you fucking kidding me!?"

Banshees were obviously inanimate objects, but Zelda could have sworn this one was smirking at him as a green glow appeared underneath the Banshee as the Elite pilot prepared to fire a fuel rod cannon right at Zelda. Out of position and at a much lower altitude than the Banshee, there wasn't much Zelda could do -

\- at least, not until the _other_ missile Flanker fired slammed into the Banshee, obliterating it completely.

"Dumbass," Zelda sneered. "What'd you think, we were just going to fire one missile and call it day? What a fucking retard."

 _"Omega-6, Flanker Leader; what's your status?"_

"Clear and free," Zelda replied as he started to climb in order to return to his squadron. "Thanks for the assist Leader."

 _"No problem,"_ Flanker replied and as the squadron passed over him, Zelda wagged his wings as a sign of thanks.

Flanker sped by and headed in the direction of the Banshees. Zelda glanced at his rear scopes as Flanker volley fired an entire salvo of missiles at the Banshees at max range before punching in their afterburners and closing to within dogfighting range. Zelda was tempted to turn around and go help them out, but Flanker wasn't the only ones attacking the Banshees; zooming his radar out, Zelda could pick up signatures of at least two other squadrons of Broadswords, as well as an entire wing of Wombats getting vectored in to aid in the attack.

 _"Omega-6, this Leader,"_ he heard Bellum say over the radio. _"What's your status, over?"_

"I took some light damage to my rear armor," Zelda reported. "And my aux engines are out. But aside from that, I'm green across the board, over."

 _"Copy that,"_ Bellum smoothly replied. _"Break. Leader to all Omega Flight pilots: RTB for rearming and refueling. I say again: return to base for rearmament and refueling. Acknowledge, over."_

 _"This is Omega-5, solid copy."_

 _"Omega-12, I copy."_

 _"Omega-3, understood."_

 _"This is Omega-9: I copy."_

"Omega-6 here: just waiting on you Leader," Zelda replied.

 _"Understood. Leader to all Omega Flight pilots, form up on me. We are returning to base, out."_

And with that, Bellum started heading back to the airbase.

As Zelda moved to return to formation, he glanced at his rear scopes. In the distance, Flanker and the rest of the assembled squadrons had finally slammed into the mass of Banshees and one hell of a melee was unfolding. It was a little too early to say for certain but by the looks of it, the UNSC was slowly gaining ground. Within the next two hours, with any luck, the skies over Byzas would be cleared of all Covenant airframes.

The UNSC Air Force was back in business baby.

* * *

1\. Rifle: in this context is an Air Force brevity code referring to a friendly air-to-surface missile launch, similar to how "Fox" is used to indicate air-to-air missiles being launched.

Author's Note

This chapter is intended to tie directly in with the end of chapter 6 of _Missing in Action_. Some readers may remember Moss and his squad getting rescued from a pair of Hunters by some Air Force fighters? Yep, that's Zelda and his flight.

Bellum might seem a bit out of character in the first part. That's because I wanted to make sure I had the exact same dialogue from _MIA_ , only, when I wrote _MIA_ I had yet to even think up of the character of Bellum. I suppose I could have gone back and altered the dialogue ever so slightly, but I decided there was a possibility I could offer an in-universe explanation, while subtly expanding on the relationship between Bellum and Zelda.

I'll admit, this chapter didn't turn out to be nearly as long as I thought it would. As I mentioned eleven chapters ago in Chapter 18, the last time Zelda showed up, I felt I was running out of ideas for depicting dogfights. I had hoped when I move the fighting to the atmosphere, i thought I would have been able to change things up, make things a bit different being in a new environment, but it didn't really pan out the way I had hoped. I guess I had made my space combat too close to the way I showed atmosphere combat or something.

Now, on a slightly different note…

I doubt you guys would remember because it's been a long time, but all the way back in my author's notes for chapter 11, I mentioned how I was going to write a little excerpt explaining the history (or at least, how I imagined it) of the MA5B "automatic rifle" (as I called it.) I actually did write that except I was going through my past chapters, and I realized I actually never posted it (oops.)

Because it would be a waste otherwise, I've gone ahead and decided to post it here, in this chapter. Almost a year later... (better late than never?)

At any case, here it is:

 **MA5B**

In the early 2500's, UNSC High Command identified the need for a new squad automatic weapon for their infantry squads. For most of the 25th century, the M247 general purpose machine gun had been utilized in said role, however its weight, length, and complexity was proving to be a detriment in battles against the lightly armored insurgents that UNSC forces found themselves increasingly fighting against. It was decided that a lighter and "true" squad automatic weapon was needed.

The two main infantry services, the UNSC Army and UNSC Marine Corps, immediately decided on two very contrasting designs. While the Army decided to adopt a more conventional machine gun design which later became designated as the M739 SAW, the Marine Corps decided that at nearly three times the length and weight of the standard issued MA37 assault rifle, the M739 SAW was still too large and heavy for their purposes. Instead, they opted to adopt a more ambitious design, one that was based off the MA37 itself. This new weapon would be known in testing as the XMA5 automatic rifle.

Contrasting earlier models of the rifle, the XMA5 AR was designed with multiple features to better suit its squad automatic weapon role. Some of the features included: a redesigned recoil buffer and muzzle break to help reduce recoil in fully automatic mode. A thicker barrel, handguard, and bolt to withstand the heat from sustained automatic firing. A larger, sixty round magazine as well as a stronger magazine catch in order to hold the added weight of all the extra ammo. A redesigned trigger pack to allow for a more crisp and cleaner trigger pull, as well as a modular handguard to allow infantrymen to mount attachments such as bipods and forward grips. Other features included seventy percent compatibility of parts between the MA37 and the XMA5, the ability of infantry squads to share magazines (unlike the MA37 and the M392 DMR,) as well as reduced risk to the operator in the field due to the similarity in appearances between the two rifles, thus making it more difficult for the enemy to single out the machine gunner.

Arguably the most innovative feature of the rifle, however, was its temperature based automatic closed bolt/open bolt operation: initial firing of the rifle would take place with a closed bolt, allowing for increased first shot accuracy, however as the barrel heated up during firing, the rifle would automatically switch to an open bolt to allow for vastly improved airflow, increasing heat dissipation as well as reducing the risk of a cook-off.

After testing was concluded, the XMA5 was adopted by the UNSC Marine Corps in March of 2504 and officially designated as the MA5B Infantry Automatic Rifle and the first batch of rifles were shipped directly oversea to troops in theater, with the famed 105th Shock Troops "Helljumper" Division being the first unit to field the weapon, with the 21st Marine Division following soon after as the first conventional unit.

The MA5B would see service throughout the entirety of the Insurrection, as well as the consequent Human-Covenant War. The rifle would in particular see high usage by units assigned to the UNSC Navy's Naval Special Warfare Command, where the rifle was valued for its light weight, reliability, and high rate of fire. However, several issues would plague the rifle for the rest of its service life, mainly: its magazine was highly unreliable and prone to jamming, constant overheating due to its lightweight materials, poor accuracy, and poor ergonomics.


	29. Chapter 29

**Chapter 29**

 **Central Byzas, Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
1900**

 **Selene**

Selene came to with a start. She couldn't see anything, but she could sense she was stuck inside a very tight and enclosed space, and that understanding began triggering all sorts of dread and anxiety. As her heart rate began to soar, it took all of Selene's effort not to panic. She took a deep breath to try and calm down, but it didn't really work. She needed to get out of here.

Think. As her instructors at the police academy always told her, don't panic: think. Break it down into steps. What was step one?

Well, obviously, step one was to get out of here, but how?

Could she move?

Experimentally, she moved her right arm but in doing so, she winced as she felt a twinge of pain. It wasn't a pain that was the result of a broken bone, but more a result of a limb having fallen asleep, but it was still enough to get Selene to stop and reconsider her actions.

Perhaps step one should have been to make sure she hadn't been injured...

Selene began wiggling her toes inside her boots. First her right foot, then her left foot. All ten toes responded as they should, which was always a good sign. That meant nothing was broken, nor was she suffering from nerve damage.

Next, she tried moving her legs. This was when she ran into her first problem. Selene could feel that something was lying on her feet, keeping them in place. It wasn't the heaviest of objects as Selene could still move her legs, but in doing so causes the walls around her to wobble. She instantly froze and it took just about everything she had to avoid freaking out as she waited to see if the walls would collapse. They didn't, and after a moment they settled, allowing Selene to relax.

Okay, so she couldn't move her legs until she figured what was keeping her pinned. That was good to know. How about her arms?

As with her legs, Selene started with her extremities. She wiggled the fingers on both her hands. To her delight, she felt them responding. Sure, they were completely numb, but she was pretty sure that was the result of the cold, not because of any injury she had suffered.

Then she moved her arms. Unlike her legs, there wasn't anything keeping them pinned down, so she lifted them up and blindly patted the rest of her body down. Aside from a mass of bruises across her entire body and a few cuts on her face, she seemed remarkably intact despite everything that had happened.

Sighing in relief, Selene gently placed her arms back down on the ground and took a quick break as she tried to figure out what to do next. What was step two again?

Oh, right. Try and figure out a way out of here.

Extending her arms again, Selene blindly began patting the air around her, trying to figure out just how much room she had to work with. By the way things felt, her upper torso was in some sort of air pocket, probably large enough for her to curl up in a ball in, provided she could free her legs...

With that task in mind, Selene set about trying to free herself. Without any lights, it was impossible for her to see exactly what was pinning her down, but she could feel it. It was like... a metal slab and some metal bars? It was hard to tell.

At any case, none of it seemed particularly heavy, the only problem was, every time she touched the stuff, it caused the very walls to shake. Obviously, whatever this stuff was, it was providing the foundation for a bunch of other crap. Unfortunately, her legs were currently incorporated into that foundation.

Patting the air around her, Selene tried to find something that she could use to replace her legs in the wall. Finding some sort of pole with a flat base on one end that seemed about the right length, Selene grabbed it and, after praying it wouldn't cause another cave in, carefully extracted it from the wall beside her head and then waited.

After a few moments of nothing happening, Selene became convinced it was safe to continue working. Jamming the bar at an angle between her legs as far underneath the debris as she could reach, she took a deep breath before hitting the bar with her palm, trying to force the stick to stand up straight so that the bar would be bearing the weight of all the debris, and not her legs. The walls wobbled dangerously around her, but Selene barely noticed. With her being so close to being freed, she was suddenly possessed with a reckless abandon, an absolute _urge_ to GET OUT OF HERE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

As soon as she felt the bar had taken up most of the debris, Selene yanked her legs out. Scooting backwards on her butt until her back hit the wall, she brought her legs up to her chest, finally freeing them from all the debris, and then waited to see if the bar would hold. The entire system seemed rather unstable just in general, and probably wouldn't hold out for long, but that was alright. All Selene needed it to do was hold up long enough for her to figure out how she was getting herself out of this hellhole.

Massaging her legs to try and restore some of the blood flow to them, Selene took a break as she tried to figure out her next step. Obviously, she needed to get out of this hole, the real question was how though?

As she sat there, she also tried to figure out what the hell had happened. She knew the sequence of events that led up to her being stuck in a hole in the middle of the ground; she obviously remembered the tunnels, the station, the light of salvation at end of the tunnel and the light of doom at the other, and then finally the staircase collapsing; but what she couldn't figure out was what triggered the entire incident. What had caused the entire subway tunnel to collapse in the first place? Obviously there had been an explosion, but was it the result of an accident? Or was it deliberate? And if it was deliberate, why would the Covenant blow up the tunnels if their own troops were inside? And if it wasn't the Covenant, then why the UNSC blow up the tunnels?

Perhaps Shin would know but then again, Selene didn't even know if he had survived the explosion. And if he had, it was more than likely he was trapped under this debris like she was. She had to figure out some way to help him, but first, she needed to figure out to save herself. So, brushing off her legs, Selene got up to get back to work -

\- and immediately froze. Did she just...?

Leaning back ever so slightly, Selene wiggled around until -

Yes, she had! Well, that would certainly make things easier for her.

Blowing out from a small hole in the corner was a slight breeze of fresh air. Given how cold it was, there was only one place it could have come from: the surface. And the fact she was feeling it so strongly had to mean she wasn't buried as deeply as she had feared. Which meant she actually had a chance of getting out of here!

Invigorated by a fresh sense of excitement, Selene began carefully digging around the hole, trying to enlarge it and see just how far beneath the surface she was. As she did, faint light began flooding her hole making Selene even more excited as it proved that not only she was close enough to the surface to actually pick up that light, it also helped illuminate the area just a bit, allowing her to actually see what she was doing.

Moving aside one chunk of sheet metal, Selene paused as it revealed that she was perhaps a little less than a meter below the surface. But not only that, there was sort of a small tunnel just outside of hole that led straight up. It was rather small, but it seemed just wide enough for Selene to wiggle through. But in order to accomplish that, she would need to have flexibility to her body. And in order to achieve that, she would need to get rid of her armor.

Selene frowned. She would have preferred to keep her armor. Not only was it more than likely the reason she had survived the collapse of the tunnel without serious injury, it was also helping to keep her warm due to the extra layering it added. Without it, she wasn't sure how long she would last in the sub-zero temperatures on the surface, especially without any shelter.

But then again, that wasn't going to be something she needed to worry about if she was still trapped underground, now was it?

With a bit of reluctance, Selene began stripping. First were her arm guards, then her knee and shin pads. Then she removed her holster and sidearm and attached it to the inside of her waistband. Finally, she removed her vest and shivered. Already she could feel the cold penetrating her uniform. This was going to suck. But what other choice did she have?

Grabbing one of her knee pads, she used it as a sort of makeshift shovel to excavate the area around the entrance to the tunnel was. Enlarging it until it was just wide enough for her to fit, Selene took a deep breath. Already her claustrophobia was being triggered just by looking at the tunnel, but she swallowed her fears, stood up, and began climbing.

The tunnel was smaller than she had initially realized, but in some ways that was a good thing as she didn't have to worry too much about falling back down. There were all sorts of protrusions sticking out from the walls, rebar and chucks of masonry, that kept snagging her clothes, but conversely they acted as handholds for her to grab hold of and use to pull and wiggle herself up. It was hard work, trying to get up, and every time she moved, dust tumbled off the walls and into her face, choking her breath, but the more she climbed the brighter it got, so she kept moving. She wondered if this was how a snake felt as it wiggled across the ground. Or perhaps an earthworm would be a better analogy.

Finally, after what felt like hours, Selene was nearly at the top. The only thing separating her and the surface was a slab of concrete. But as she tried to move the chunk, she found it refused to budge.

Frowning to herself, Selene shoved it as hard as she could, but she had no leverage and the slab went nowhere.

No...

She tried again, this time finding some footholds for her feet and pushing with all her might but again, the slab refused to move.

Nononono, she was so close!

She began pushing and shoving and punching and clawing at the slab as panic slowly began trickling in. She was stuck! Oh god, she was stuck in a hole in the middle of the ground! She was stuck, and there wasn't anything she could do and she was going to die here and no one would ever know and ohgodohgodohgod SHE DIDN'T WANT TO DIE!

She froze as she felt the trickle of something warm sliding down her cheeks and reached up to touch it, only to find she was sobbing like a little child. The realization electrified her, and forced herself to take a deep breath and calm down.

"Calm down Selene," she said to herself as she closed her eyes and tried to pretend she was talking to a panicking child that had just been rescued from a bad car accident. Or an apartment fire. Or from the arms of their dead parent. "Everything is going to be okay. You're safe now. No one is going to hurt you. Shhhhh. Everything is going to be alright."

Reciting these words over and over to herself, Selene readied herself to try to move the slab once more. Digging her boots into the wall, she bent her legs ever so slightly, then launched herself upwards and began shoving at the slab with all her strength.

At first, nothing happened. But just as Selene was about to start freaking again, there was a slight _creak_ , and the slab shifted ever so slightly.

Hope began blossoming inside her bosom, and Selene prepared herself to try again. Gathering her strength, Selene slammed into the slab once more. This time, the slab definitely moved, shifting to allow even more light into the hole.

Almost there...!

Blinking the dust out of her eyes, Selene gathered up all her strength once more...

...and hurtled herself at the slab, shoving it out of the way completely. She was free!

Almost sobbing with relief, Selene wiggled her way out of the hole and onto the surface. Throwing herself onto the ground, she laid there, gasping for air and just basking in the fact she was no longer trapped. She had made it...

Eventually, her euphoria wore out and reality settled in. She may had gotten herself free, but she was still stuck in the middle of a city that was under attack by an extremely dangerous and hostile alien force, with no chance of a rescue, and only a rather sketchy acting man for help. And, depending on whether she could find him or not, she might not even have that.

Sitting upright, Selene took a look at her surroundings. By the looks of it, she was sitting inside what was left of the subway station. The roof and the walls had survived intact, but the floor had completely collapsed. By her estimate, Selene was probably a good four to six meters below the surface. The sunlight from the outside shined through the open entrance to the station, acting as sort of a beacon of salvation for Selene, and she was so tempted to start trying to find a way out of here, but she couldn't leave. Not without Shin. He may have been a rather suspicious looking character, and despite his assurances, there was something about his demeanor that caused the hairs on the back of Selene's neck to stand up straight, but there was no denying: if it wasn't for him, Selene would not have made it this far. She owed him.

But even if she didn't, she still would have tried to rescue him. It was the right thing to do and not only that, despite everything that had happened so far, nothing could change the fact that Selene was a police officer, and it was her job to do everything in her power to protect the citizens of this city, whether they be actual residents or tourists that happened to be passing through. She had to find him and at least try to save him.

But the real question was, where would she start?

Selene looked around. Shin had been in front of her when the stairs had collapsed. Assuming she had fallen straight down, then theoretically, Shin would have ended up maybe within a meter in front of the hole she had found herself in.

Climbing to her feet, Selene began pacing the area where she remembered the staircase as having once been.

"Shin?" she softly called out. She wanted to be loud enough for him to hear her underground, but not so loud as to attract some unwanted attention from the outside. Who knew how many aliens were in the area?

"Shin?" she tried again. "Joshua Shin! Can you hear me?"

She was tempting to start stamping her feet in the hopes Shin would hear the noise but remembering how unstable her hole was, Selene just barely managed to catch herself in time. "SHIN!"

Selene froze. For a moment, she thought she had seen something move out of the corner of her eye...

She slowly turned around. Jutting out of the ground was a small pipe that she swore hadn't been there a moment ago.

"Shin?" she called out again, and nearly squealed in delight as the pipe moved.

Dashing over to the pipe, she glanced through it, though it was obviously too dark for her to see anything. Cupping her mouth over the end, she called, "Shin?"

"Yeah..." came Shin's muffled and slightly strained voice. "Who's that?"

Barely managing to avoid letting out a cry of joy, Selene replied, "It's me, Officer Riddle."

For a moment, there was nothing but silence and Selene frowned. Had Shin hit his head? Did he not remember who she was?

She needed not worry though because a moment later, Shin called out, "Selene?"

Grinning with relief even though Shin wouldn't be able to see it, Selene nevertheless bobbed her head. "Yeah, it's me! Are you alright?"

"I think so," Shin replied, sounding distracted. "Not exactly a lot of light in here to tell for sure, you know?"

Selene reflexively nodded. "Hang in there Shin! I'll get you out!"

"Hey, take your time," she heard him drily reply as she ran off to go find something to start digging with. "I'm not going anywhere."

Finding a large piece of rebar with one end that sort of hooked upwards, Selene hurriedly dashed back to the pipe.

"Shin, I'm going to start digging," she informed him. "But I don't know how stable everything is. Let me know the moment things start to shake or fall down so I can stop, okay?"

"Sounds good to me," Shin agreed, and Selene could almost hear his shrugging his shoulders.

"It's going to be alright Shin!" Selene yelled as she started to work. "Everything is going to be okay! Just stay calm and I'll get you out as soon as I can!"

"Does it sound like I'm freaking out?" Shin replied and Selene had to admit, Shin sounded remarkably calm. In fact, if anything, he almost sounded bored, as if being trapped under a pile of debris after a really big bomb had exploded was an everyday event for him. And hey, for all Selene knew, maybe it was.

Selene started by moving as many large chunks of debris out of the way as she could before she started to dig. As she worked, she tried to think of something to say to keep Shin's mind occupied as he waited for rescue.

"So, just how far down are you?" she found herself asking.

"No idea," came the immediate response. "It's not like I got a tape measure to check."

"I was probably about a little less than a meter underground when I came to," Selene reported. "You were higher on the stairs than I was when it collapsed, so you got to be closer to the surface."

"Not necessarily."

Selene paused in her digging. "Come again?"

"I said, 'not necessarily,'" Shin replied. "Depending on how far back you were, you might have been running right over the stair's foundation, so you wouldn't have had that far to fall. Meanwhile, I _know_ I was running across the part of the staircase that was unsupported because when I fell, I fell straight down to the ground. So, I might be twice as far as you were."

That gave Selene pause.

"That's... that would not be good," Selene admitted. "I don't know how long we were unconscious for, but there's a chance the Covenant are still in the area. We got to get you out of here as soon as possible. It is possible for you to dig your way up and met me halfway?"

"What do you think I've been doing?" Shin replied, sounding disgruntled and Selene realized if she listened closely, she could actually hear him digging. "And we might actually have a bit more time than you think."

"How so?"

"It's about nineteen hundred hours right now."

"So?"

"So that means we've been out for nearly three and a half hours."

That gave Selene pause. Three and half _hours?_ That could not be good for her health. Didn't she read something about if a person had been unconscious for more than a few minutes, it would require a full-fledged doctor to make sure there wasn't permanent damage done to their brain? Or something like that? Obviously, Selene and Shin didn't have the ability to get checked out by a doctor right now, so she could only hope they would be okay.

"What the heck happened anyways?" Selene asked, changing the subject.

"A really big bomb went off. That's what happened."

"No, I know _that_ ," Selene replied. "What I meant was, well, what _was_ that?"

"Well, I'm no EOD, or even aircraft ordnance, but if I had to guess: it was a BLU-327(1)."

"A fuel air explosive," Shin replied, answering Selene's unvoiced question. Not that she knew what a fuel air explosive was either. No, her main concern was -

"Who set it off?"

"We probably did."

"...what?"

"We." Selene could hear Shin move and she could only imagine he was pointing at his uniform because he continued, "as in: we, the UNSC."

Selene paused in her digging. "Why would the UNSC want to blow us up?"

"I doubt they were targeting us specifically," Shin assured her. "More likely they were trying to destroy the entire tunnel network. Hence the use of a fuel air explosive as opposed to a conventional bomb. As to why they would want to do that, well... you saw how many Covenant soldiers were down here in that one small stretch of a tunnel. There were probably dozens more patrols like that within those subway tunnels. Maybe even hundreds."

"But if we were traveling down here," Selene slowly began, "it stands to reason _other_ civilians would be down here. And if they weren't anywhere near a station when the tunnels blew..."

"Yep. There's probably a couple dozen civilian casualties mixed in with the rest of the bodies down here. Who knows, maybe even a couple hundred? Honestly, who can say just how many people decided to flee down here when the invasion began?"

"But, all those people..." Selene said weakly.

"Collateral damage," Shin dismissively said. "It happens."

Selene growled. She always hated that phrase.

"But did it have to?" she argued. "The UNSC could have, I don't know, given us a warning before they blew everything straight to hell."

"How?" Shin asked with a grunt. "By calling everyone over their phones or radios? _We_ don't have either of those things and we'd be the most likely people to have them, being an Airman and a cop. If we didn't have a radio, chances are, anyone else down here wouldn't either."

"Well... a megaphone or an announcement or something -"

"Would have tipped off the Covenant," Shin pointed out. "See, here's the thing about being in the military you have to understand: at some point in just about everyone's career, they will be faced with a question: is it better to try and kill a large amount of enemy combatants, even if it comes with the risk of causing an undetermined amount of collateral damage? Or is it better to try and save as many civilians as possible, even if it means risking the enemy would get away?"

"You - " Selene started to say, but Shin quickly interrupted her.

"I know what you're going to say," Shin declared. "You're going to say: 'save the civilians,' weren't you? It wouldn't surprise me; that's the cop's answer after all. That's literally your job. But you see, the military is different. Our job is to kill the enemy, no matter the cost. And if this war has taught us one thing, it's that if you've got the Covenant in your sights, you start shooting and you keep shooting no matter who might be in the way. Because you see, everyone left on this planet is already doomed to die. There's no changing that. But the more Covenant we kill here, the less soldiers the Covenant will have in future invasions, thus potentially saving even more lives in the long run."

There was a long stretch of silence as Selene tried to absorb all that.

"That's a really coldhearted way of looking at things," she finally said.

"Is it?" Shin asked, sounding genuinely curious.

"Yes, it is. These are people's lives you're talking about here. They aren't, I don't know, numbers on a sheet of paper or dots on a screen. These are living, breathing, human beings."

"Well, the breathing part is definitely no longer true," Shin quipped, causing Selene to snarl.

"Do you think it's possible, for at least one second, for you to be respectful about somebody's death!?" she snapped.

"Sorry," Shin replied though he didn't sound apologetic in the least bit. "Dark humor is usually how we military folk deal with this subject. But, honestly, you need to understand something: this is what being a soldier is all about. We do the terrible, horrible things. We make the hard choices. We coat ourselves in blood and we live with the nightmares so that people like you can sit around, judging us for the decisions we made. But, try to remember the only reason why you're still around, able to do that sort of thing, is because these 'coldhearted' decisions are what ensured your survival in the first place."

That gave Selene pause, and she quickly turned back to digging to buy herself some time to gather her thoughts to formulate a response. For the next few moments, there was nothing but silence before Selene finally spoke up.

"If we can't look at ourselves in the mirror after everything is said and done," she softly began. "If we cast aside everything: all sense of justice, all sense of righteousness, everything that makes us human, in the name of survival... if we do all that and more... then what exactly was worth saving in the first place?"

Selene never got to hear Shin's response because at that moment, the ground beneath her makeshift shovel abruptly gave way, and she jumped back in alarm.

"Shin? Shin?" she called out in a panic, afraid she had accidently caused a cave in. She could hear him sneezing and coughing, which was good sign, but still, Selene found her heart was racing.

"I'm okay," she heard Shin yell. "Just... give me a damn warning next time you do that!"

"Sorry," Selene quickly said. "But I didn't expect that to happen." She paused. "Hang on - how can I hear you so clearly?"

Carefully walking back to the hole, Selene glanced down to see that, somehow, due to the way the ground had collapsed, it had created a small tunnel that extended all the way to the hole Shin was cooped up in. He looked up and owlishly blinked, and all Selene could think to do was say in a cheerful tone, "Hello there!"

"Huh," was Shin's response. "Well, that'll make things easier I suppose."

Selene absentmindedly nodded as she studied the new hole. "You think this hole is big enough for you to climb through?" she asked him.

She could see Shin carefully considering the question.

"Maybe. Maybe not," he finally said.

"Why not?" Selene countered. "That's how I was able to get out of my hole."

"Yes, but in case you haven't noticed, you're a lot more slender than I am," Shin drily pointed out. "What's wrong with continuing to dig me out?"

"Nothing!" Selene quickly said. "It's just, if you could climb out, it would probably be a lot faster than me trying to dig you out. And safer, I would imagine."

She could see Shin skeptically studying the new tunnel, before shrugging.

"Supposed the worst thing that could happen is I can't get through," Shin said with a shrug. "Guess I could try it."

"Might need to remove your vest first," Selene noted. "That was the only way I could do it."

Shin nodded, and Selene could see him shedding his police vest as he rubbed his hands together and stood up.

"Well, here goes nothing," he declared and started to pull himself up.

Selene stood there and watched as Shin did his best to shimmy his way up through the hole and onto the surface. It didn't look easy. For one thing, Shin had been much lower than Selene had been, by at least twice as much. Plus, as Shin had pointed out, he was a lot bigger than she was, meaning he had a much tighter fit. The one thing he had going for him was the fact he had a lot more upper body strength than Selene did, but given the tight squeeze, it didn't seem to help much.

"Do you... do you need my help?" she finally asked after a few moments of watching Shin struggle without much progress.

"No. I'm good," he told her and Selene nodded as she watched him continue.

"Are you sure?" she said after another few moments where he didn't move at all.

"Yeah. I'm sure."

"...cause I could totally stick this stick down there and help pull you up - "

"Officer Riddle," Shin interrupted.

"Yes?"

"Please shut up."

Selene closed her mouth with a mute _click_. Stepping back, she watched as Shin made his way up to the surface, stopping every now and then to either take a breath or get his clothes unstuck. Eventually though, he was able to make it to the surface, and had just gotten his head and left arm out, when he finally ran into trouble.

"Uh-oh."

Selene looked up from that patterns she was boredly drawing into the snow.

"'Uh-oh?'" she echoed. "What happened?"

"I think I'm stuck," he admitted.

"What?"

"Whatever I was standing on just gave way," Shin admitted. "Which really sucks because this hole ain't exactly big enough for me to fit my shoulders through, so I was just planning on ramming it, but that's not possible now if I have no footing."

Selene inhaled sharply as her heart rate picked up as adrenaline started racing through her veins once more.

"What do you need me to do?"

"Grab my hand and try to pull me out."

Tossing her stick aside, Selene dashed over to Shin. Grabbing his hand, she planted her feet on the ground and nodded at him. "Ready."

"Okay, we both pull at the same time. On three. One, two... three!"

Selene began pulling as hard as she could -

\- only to find herself nearly getting pulled off her feet as Shin yanked her towards him. For a moment, the two of them stared awkwardly at each other.

"You know," Shin glibly commented, "this would be so much easier if our roles were reversed because, uh, you're not exactly as strong as I am."

Selene climbed up her to feet, feeling her face flushing even though she didn't know why. While it was true she was probably stronger than most of the women of her age and size, she didn't exactly come close when measured up against some of the other male officers in her department, even those who were about her size or even smaller.

"Well, that didn't work," Shin noted as Selene recovered herself and tried to think of what else to do.

"Hang on," Selene said as she regarded the pole she had been using as her shovel. "Maybe I could..."

Selene abruptly trailed off as her ears suddenly picked up on what seemed like the sound of a jet engine in the distance, only this was so alien sounding, she knew it had to be a Covenant aircraft. "Do you hear that?"

She glanced at Shin, who nodded. "Yep."

"That's a Covenant aircraft, isn't it?"

"Yep."

"And it's getting closer?"

"Uh-huh."

"Shit!" Selene hissed. "Why would the Covenant be coming back here after this many hours?"

"It certainly isn't because they're looking for survivors," Shin agreed. "So... who knows? And who cares? You should go."

"What?" Selene turned to stare at Shin in astonishment, who looked back without a hint of fear in his face. "Why would I do that?"

"If that Phantom sweeps in front of the station," Shin jerked his head in the direction of the station entrance that was still wide open to the general area, "they're going to see us. And if they see us, they're going to kill us. I can't go anywhere right now, but you can."

"I can't just leave you!" Selene exclaimed, half shocked and half outraged by the suggestion.

"Why not? It's the logical choice."

"But not the right one!" Selene reflexively snapped back.

"Well, the two aren't mutually exclusive," Shin calmly replied with a shrug. "Seriously though, get out of here. Save yourself."

"Shin, _shut up_ ," Selene snapped as the sound of the Covenant engines grew louder and louder.

"Look, I'm just saying: it's better this way," he told her. "Hell, you could even leave your sidearm: I'll slow them down while you make your escape. It's what I would do."

"Well I'm not you Shin," Selene snapped. "Nor am I soldier. I'm a police officer which means my job is to make sure everyone survives: the good guys, the bad guys, and the victims! But if you want logic, how's this for size: if the Covenant find you and kill you, what makes you think they'll just leave? Chances are, they'll start searching the area, just in case there's more than one human around. It's what you would do, it's what I would do. Basic cordoning off an area one oh one!"

Shin cocked his head, as if he hadn't considered that.

"That's true," he allowed. "But it doesn't matter, does it? I can't get out, and you can't get me out. So, we're kind of screwed no matter what."

"No, we're not!"

Selene grabbed her stick. Finding a hunk of concrete nearby with rebar sticking out, Selene hooked the curved part of her stick to one of the protruding pieces, making sure it wouldn't slide off, and handed the other end to Shin.

"What do you want me to do with this?" he asked.

"It's like you pointed out," Selene told him. "Of the two of us, you would be the only one strong enough to pull you out. So... pull!"

Shin started pulling. At first, Selene was concerned he would be strong enough to move the concrete slab, but the slab was so big and heavy, it was acting as an anchor. As long as Shin kept pulling as hard as he could, eventually something would have to give: the ground or the slab. And Selene didn't think the ground was nearly as tough as a reinforced slab of concrete.

Sure enough, Selene could see dirt starting to pile up as Shin began pulling himself out from the ground. But he wasn't going fast enough. At this point, the noise of the Covenant engines were practically on top of them, and looking up, Selene could start to see shadows forming: the result of the bright light of their engines.

"Come on Shin, you can do it!" she urged. Shin was turning red in his face and just about every one of his veins was popping out, but he wasn't free just yet. "Come on, pull!"

In an attempt to help, Selene ran over and began tugging on the back of his jacket. She wasn't sure if it was helping, but it sure wasn't hurting as Shin's other shoulder began emerging until the ground abruptly shifted and his right shoulder was finally free. With both arms now available, Selene let Shin go as he reached out, grabbed the stick with both hands, and completely yank his body free from the hole.

And not a moment too soon as a shadow fell over the entrance and Selene looked up. To her horror, a massive spaceship was landing just outside of the entrance to the station

"What are they doing!?" she started to ask, but Shin grabbed her shoulder and shoved her in the direction of the wall. They hastily took cover at the base of the wall just below the entrance as, with a loud _thump_ , the spaceship touched ground.

From the shadows being casted onto the ground by the lights from the spaceship, Selene watched in terror as three aliens hopped out of the ship and landed on the ground in the entrance above her. Based on their shadows, it looked like two Grunts and an Elite, but given Selene's lack of weapons and training, they might as well have been a pair of Hunters.

The Elite began yelling something, but given that it was in their alien language, Selene had no idea what they were saying. However, it sounded really angry and that made her nervous. Had they seen her or Shin?

She glanced over in Shin's direction, only to see a slightly relieved look on his face.

"You understand what they're saying?" she mouthed.

Shin lifted his hand and made a 'sort of' gesture.

"They're speaking in Sangheili," he whispered. "I'm not fluent, but I did take a couple of classes. Basically, from what I can tell, the gist of what the Elite is saying is, 'hurry up you idiots. Finish the repairs so we can resume our... hunt? Search?' I don't know the exact translation. Point is, they're search for... a demon?"

"What? What does that even mean?" Selene whispered. Shin shrugged.

"No idea. The point is, they're not here for us. It's just a coincidence they landed here. That's the good news. The bad news is?"

They both looked up as sparks began raining down from above.

"They could be here for a while," Selene finished.

"Yep. As long as we don't give them a reason to look down here, we should be fine, though it could be for a few hours. In the meantime though..."

Shin glanced in Selene's direction and to her immense surprise, he had a massive grin on his face.

"You got a deck of cards?"

* * *

1\. BLU-327/C: this is a designation I made up for an Air Force fuel air explosive as shown in chapter 4 of _Missing in Action._


	30. Chapter 30

**Chapter 30**

 **UNSC** _ **Moonlight Sonata**_ **  
May 6, 2545  
2126**

 **Luzader**

Luzader passively watched as, on screen, one of the Rangers carefully placed a black strip on the edge of the door.

 _"Preparing to breach,_ " Captain Rogers reported. _"In three, two, one... execute."_

The point man pulled the trigger. There was a loud _bang_ , and the door was blown to shreds. Almost immediately, another Ranger leaned around the corner and hurtled a small device into the room.

 _ **WHAMP WHAMP WHAMP**_

Seven flashes could be seen going off inside the room, and a sort of ringing noise filled the speakers.

 _"Breaching, breaching!"_ the lead Ranger yelled and entered the room.

Luzader watched as a second Ranger follow closely behind before Rogers and the camera moved in, weapon raised. The screen briefly flashed to compensate for the change in light, but Luzader could see the two Rangers on either side of Rogers, covering the left and right sides of the room, respectively, while Rogers swept the center. The room was empty aside from two Grunts struggling to recover from the flash bangs, but before they could -

 _PFT PFT PFT_

\- Rogers and his men gunned them down, riddling them with holes with their suppressed assault rifles.

 _"Left clear,"_ one of the Rangers declared.

 _"Right cleared."_

 _"Room secured,"_ Rogers announced, putting his rifle on safe and lowering it so that the muzzle was safely pointed at the ground. _"Romanoff, how's the exit?"_

 _"Rear access is secured boss,"_ came the reply. _"No movement."_

 _"Copy. Barton, how's the view from up there?"_

 _"No sign of any Covenant QRF."_

 _"Alright, understood. Wodenson, cover our six. The rest of you? You know what to do: SSE. Let's move it."_

Luzader placed his hands on his desk and intently watched as the rest of Rogers' team poured into the room and began sweeping the area. There wasn't much to see. This room wasn't anything special: it wasn't any sort of Covenant command center or armory or even a barracks. It wasn't even a Covenant building. It was just a room, inside a simple human civilian building that appeared to have been a sort of souvenir shop in a past life.

But it was because of that simplicity that made it so interesting the Covenant had felt the need to post several guards both outside and inside the room...

Rogers' helmet camera swept towards the back of the room, revealing several human bodies lying on the ground in a neat row. Luzader had been fighting this war too long to be bother by a sight like that any longer, but he could hear Rogers sighing.

 _"_ Sonata _? Be advised, we have located several bodies inside the room. Human bodies,"_ Rogers reported. _"Barnes? Check them and make sure they're not wired to anything."_

The team's assigned EOD tech walked up and carefully began checking the bodies. After a few tense moments, he finally stood up.

 _"They're all secured Captain,"_ he reported.

 _"Sam."_

"Sonata _, we have eleven bodies here,"_ the team's medic reported. _"I'm seeing both male and female. Victims' ages range from, I'd say seven to about eighty. All victims appeared to have been killed sometime between the hours of -"_

Luzader leaned forward and grabbed the microphone from his technician. "Sergeant Wilson, I don't give a shit about the civilians," he snapped, interrupting the medic's report. "Tell me about that soldier on the far left."

Luzader could almost hear Rogers' frown of disapproval from here as Wilson moved over, and it took Luzader just about everything to avoid snapping at the Captain. This was what they were here for. Not the civilians.

The view of the camera shifted to that of the corpse of the soldier Luzader had spotted lying on the ground on the far left.

 _"Okay, victim is a military aged male, approximately nineteen, twenty years of age,"_ Wilson reported. _"Multiple stab wounds across upper and lower torso, as well as the back and the legs. The circular shape of the wounds would indicate he was being stabbed by, I don't know, a spear or even a stick of some kind. Fractured forearms and bruises would indicate he was alive and fighting back when this happened. Death was caused by a single plasma shot to the back of the head."_

 _"So he was tortured and then executed,"_ Rogers summarized.

 _"Basically, yes,"_ Wilson grimly confirmed, before continuing. _"No weapons, armor, or gear, but he is wearing the uniform of the UNSC Army. Checking the division patch..."_

Wilson leaned over and turned the body over, revealing a simple subdued insignia on the body's left shoulder depicting a jackalope with the words 'airborne' written over it.

 _"Shoulder sleeve insignia is that of the 222nd Airborne Division,"_ Wilson announced.

"Check for identification," Luzader ordered.

Rogers reached out to the corpse and began search around the man's neck before fishing out a pair of dog tags. He activated them, revealing a holographic image of the victim.

 _"Falco, Puck,"_ the hologram read. _"Eight niner zero seven six dash niner six seven seven one dash Papa Foxtrot. Religion: Hellenism -"_

The hologram continued to read off the dog tag, but Luzader was no longer paying attention. Instead, he glanced at his technician, who was hastily typing the name into the search computer. She looked up and gave Luzader a single nod.

"Confirmed Captain," Luzader immediately announced. "That's one of the men Major Volkov had requisitioned for his airborne detachment. Continue searching the body for more clues. See if you can't figure out where Major Volkov and his men went from there. Report back to me the moment you've found something, over."

" _Understood sir. Rogers, out."_

The screen blinked off and Luzader plopped down into his seat with a mute grunt, feeling conflicted. On one hand, this corpse was the first sign of Major Volkov and his team ever since the man had dropped off the grid two hours ago. On the other, the corpse wasn't exactly a giant sign indicating where Volkov had gone or what his status was.

Luzader mentally sighed. Damn that man. Why he felt the need to take a ground team in and go searching for the missing Spartans instead of taking the safer option of using indirect, Luzader had no idea. But fact of the matter was, Volkov _had_ gone in, and now they were left without a clue where the Spartans' corpses were, without a clue where Volkov and his men were, and little to no time left to search for any of them.

And speaking of no time...

One of Luzader's men suddenly leaned towards him.

"Sir," he quietly said, "I have Admiral Parangosky on the line for you."

This time Luzader really did sigh. Great, just what he needed.

"Transfer her to my console," he ordered. "And set privacy screens to maximum."

The technician nodded, and Luzader took a second to straighten himself up before nodding. At once an image of Admiral Margaret Parangosky, director of the entire Office of Naval Intelligence, and widely agreed to be one of the most dangerous women in all of the UNSC, appeared on his screen.

 _"Report,"_ she demanded.

"We found a corpse ma'am," Luzader began, "belonging to one Specialist Puck Falco, whose last known assignment was to 1st Platoon, Quebec Company of the 3rd Brigade, 222nd Airborne Division -"

 _"Lieutenant Commander,"_ Parangosky said and Luzader immediately shut up.

"Yes ma'am?"

 _"Commander, I don't care about the losses of the rank and file,"_ Parangosky coolly said. _"What I care about are those Spartans. Do you have any future leads to their status?"_

Luzader nervously swallowed. "No ma'am," he admitted.

Parangosky did not look happy. _"Commander, I don't need to remind you about the considerable value, both strategically and monetary, these Spartans represent, do I?"_ she asked in a low voice.

Luzader quickly shook his head. "No ma'am."

Parangosky stared at him with a cold look, and Luzader could start to feel sweat forming on the back of his neck. She held his gaze for almost a minute before finally turning away, much to Luzader's relief.

 _"I want them found, Commander, dead or alive,"_ Paragonsky demanded. _"And I want them secured. I don't care if you have to burn the entire city to ash, just. Get. It. DONE."_

"Yes ma'am. Of course ma'am. Right away ma'am," Luzader quickly stuttered.

With barely another glance, Paragosky's image disappeared, leaving Luzader sitting there, wondering how on Earth he was going to accomplish this mission.

Realizing nothing would be achieved by him just sitting there, Luzader reached out and switch off the privacy screen.

"Lieutenant!" he called out, and his communications officer looked up.

"Sir?"

"Reconnect me to Captain Rogers and his Rangers. Informed them they need to redouble their efforts - we're running out of time. We either need to find Major Volkov and his men, or Spartan Team Argon."

"And we need to do it _now_."

 **XXXXX**

 **Covenant designated Landing Zone: Deliverance  
Forerunner Designated World: MS 222-53 a  
9th Age of Reclamation  
8th Cycle of the Planet's Rotation  
**

 **Zek**

Zek was no one special. In fact, he was a rather all-around average Kig-Yar. A poor Ruuhtian who had been born and raised on the outskirts of Tilu City, one of the largest cities on Eayn, the Kig-Yar homeworld, Zek didn't possess much in terms of looks, riches, or even religious fervor. Which may have seemed odd, given he was a soldier of the Covenant as opposed to a member of one of the pirate crews, but truth of the matter was, Zek had joined the Covenant for one simple reason: to make himself more attractive to any potential mates. That was it.

Sure, he told everyone he believed the humans were heretics. Sure, he told everyone that he believed they deserved to be exterminated from the very face of the galaxy for offended the very Gods with their continual existence. He even occasionally went to the sermons given by the more fanatical members of his kind and cheered along with everyone else when they demanded the Matriarchs do more to support the Covenant in their Crusade to expunge the filth of humanity from the very face of the galaxy. But for him to take an active part in that purging? That, Zek saw little reason in.

Which is why he had joined the Navy, instead of the Army. Zek had no real desire to risk his life for a cause that was not his own. Other members of his kind may have thought him a coward, but Zek had been perfectly content seeing all the fighting from behind several lengths worth of nanolaminate plating.

So how was it, Zek found himself stumbling through the snow and the cold, tightly gripping a Type-51 carbine, wearily and fearfully looking in all directions, hunting for Demons?

"This is no good," Zek muttered to himself. "This is no good."

He hadn't seen any humans, aside from that one the Unggoy had been torturing back at the shrine... museum, but the sound of fighting had been echoing through the streets since the time Zek had set foot here.

"What we do is but for the glory of the High Prophets."

Zek snapped his beak in annoyance in Rezan's direction.

"Yes, you've said as much," Zek grumpily retorted. "Many times, in fact. But now, methinks you are attempting to convince _yourself_ of this, not me."

A guilty look passed over Rezan's face.

"I am merely attempting to assuage you," he began, "that our actions are not for ourselves but - "

"QUIET ON THE LINE!" their new Sangheili commander, whom Zek didn't even know the name of, snapped from the front of the column.

"Why?" Zek defiantly muttered under his breath. "Are we not nearing the base?"

Rezan made a gesture of ignorance, and Zek mentally sighed before falling silent. It wasn't worth attempting to argue.

From the moment they had reached the former firebase at the human museum, Zek and Rezan had been immediately drafted by the Sangheili at the front of the column and despite Zek's protest that they belonged to the Fleet and not the Legions, the Sangheili had demanded both Zek and Rezan join the hunt for the Demons. And so, they had journeyed through much of this city, looking for clues, but finding little in actual results.

Fortunately, the entire patrol had been recalled to another nearby firebase the landing force had established. The reasoning behind their recall was unknown to Zek, but he cared not, only that he would hopefully be able to obtain a break. As well as possibly some food.

Forcing their way through snow banks and mounds of debris, the patrol soon reached the location of the firebase, Firebase Reformation as it was called, or so Zek heard the Sangheili say. The base had been established within the confines of a former human facility. By outward appearances, the facility appeared to have been once a central logistical center for vehicles that traveled on rails.

Zek resisted the urge to snort. How primitive these humans were: they were still utilizing wheeled based vehicles as opposed to anti-gravity ones.

They were approaching the outer edge of the perimeter when someone yelled out in accented Sangheili, "Halt! Stand and be identified!"

Zek's Sangheili commander gestured for the column to stop before stalking forward. "It is I, Evocatus Thon 'Quetshadee! Who dares challenge me?"

There was a mute yelp of surprise, and two Kig-Yar came tumbling out of a nearby building. Zek resisted the urge to sneer when he realized they were both T'vaoans. T'vaoans. Always saw themselves as superior to all other Kig-Yar, but in truth they were about as undisciplined and rabble-like as the _Unggoy_. Pathetic.

"Many apologies Evocatus 'Quetshadee," the larger of the two T'vaoans began groveling. Based on the configuration of his armor, Zek could tell he was a Major. "For we did not recognize you."

'Quetshadee immediately silenced them with a look.

"You two are the perimeter guards?" he demanded.

The two T'vaoans exchanged a nervous look.

"Yes sire, we are," the Major replied.

"Then you both are very _poor_ guards!" 'Quetshadee snapped. "For why were my forces allowed to approach so closely before being challenged!? And where are the rest of the guards!? There should be a full File protecting this section!"

The T'vaoan Major hurriedly bowed low. "Humble apologies 'Quetshadee. We have but just arrived. For there _was_ a File here, led by one Minor Kitun 'Refumee -"

"Of the House 'Refumee?" 'Quetshadee interrupted. The T'vaoan Major paused.

"I believe so, yes," he started to say when he was interrupted again.

"Bah! I know the young fool!" 'Quetshadee declared. "What of him?"

"There was an explosion. Approximately one sixth of this planet's cycle ago in that direction." The Major pointed roughly in the opposite direction Zek and the rest of the column had come from. "Minor 'Refumee, fearing this was the result of Demon activity, decided to take his File and go investigate -"

"You mean the young fool decided to abandon his post and charge out in the hopes to achieve fame and glory for he and his House, leaving you two fools to protect this base!" 'Quetshadee abruptly interrupted, much to the Major's shock.

"Evocatus 'Quetshadee," the Major began, "I would never presume -"

"Perhaps _you_ don't, but I do!" 'Quetshadee snapped, before sighing. "Ah, the young are always impatient. If he was not but of House 'Refumee, I would punish him harshly for this, but no matter. Young Kitun will merely feel my wrath in other ways."

'Quetshadee suddenly fixed both T'vaoans with a harsh gaze.

"But you two should be grateful to the Gods no human dare violate this perimeter whilst young Kitun was cavorting. For if there had been, _your_ punishment would be far more severe."

"Yes, of course Evocatus 'Quetshadee," the Major stammer. "Many thanks for your mercy."

'Quetshadee snorted in disgust.

"Resume your duties," was all he snapped before marching towards the interior of the base. After a split second hesitation, the column moved to follow him.

The guards moved aside to allow the rest of the soldiers into the base and as Zek walked by, he couldn't help but sneer in disgust at the Major. Neither of the T'vaoans seemed to noticed as they both appeared too shakened by the dress down they had just received and Zek was about to walk past them when -

He hesitated and glanced past the T'vaoan's shoulders. For a moment, he thought he had seen some footprints in the snow behind them, the size and shape of which matched that of a single human that had been walking towards the center of the firebase...

"Zek!" Rezan called out, causing Zek to jump. "Hurry up! I don't wish to be in this cold any longer than is necessary!"

"Yes, I'll be right there!" Zek called back before glancing in the direction he thought the footprints had been, only by then the wind shifted and whatever Zek had seen was forever erased by the snow.

Zek stared at the spot for a moment, before shaking his head. He must have been more tired than he thought: he was staring to see enemies everywhere. Yes, that must have been what it was: a mere figment of his imagination.

He hurriedly chased after Rezan, catching up to him and the rest of the column as they entered a large building located near the center of the base. Looking around, Zek realized the building had been some sort of central storage facility for the rail vehicles, only at this point, all of said vehicles had been removed and replaced by Covenant equipment. Recharging stations, weapon racks, supply crates, and even some food.

The sight of the food automatically made Zek's gizzard grumble, reminding Zek of just how long it had been since his last meal, and he looked around to see if he could obtain permission from Evocatus 'Quetshadee to leave the column. However, 'Quetshadee had already disappeared, presumably to report to his superiors or perhaps obtain a meal of his own. In fact, much of the column Zek and Rezan had been traveling with had already dispersed, and Zek decided to do the same.

"Come on Rezan," Zek said, patting Rezan on the shoulder. "Let's get some food."

"Yes, I could use some sustenance," Rezan agreed.

Walking over to the nearest food crate, Zek looked around. There didn't appear to be anyone monitoring the food, so Zek merely reached out and grabbed a couple of cans, one for himself and Rezan. Moving over to an empty weapon's rack, Zek stuck his carbine inside for safe keeping, before throwing himself on the ground.

"Ah!" he sighed in relief. "That's better."

"You would imagined with the amount of walking we were required to do on the _Hammer_ , we would have been used to this type of exertion," Rezan pointed as he too, plopped down on the ground.

"Artificial gravity versus natural," Zek pointed out. "The planet's pull here is much stronger than it was on the _Hammer_."

"True," Rezan allowed as he tore open his food and Zek quickly followed suit. Ah, bottarga. Excellent.

As he sat there, stuffing his face, Zek couldn't help but feel extremely relaxed and at first, that didn't make much sense to him. He was, after all, still on an extremely hostile world that contained plenty of angry humans that would more than likely be pleased to kill him. How could he be relaxed at a time like this?

But as he looked around, Zek suddenly realized the answer: surrounded by all sorts of friendly forces, guards, and weapons, for the first time since Zek had been forced to abandon the _Hammer_ , he felt safe. Secured. With this many guards and defenses around, there was no way a human could hope to enter this area. This was perhaps the only place on this planet that Zek was completely safe from harm. And looking at Rezan, Zek realized he wasn't the only who felt that way.

"Lots of guards around," Zek gleefully pointed out between bites.

"Yes," Rezan rapidly agreed. "And have you see their armor configuration?"

In truth, Zek had not as he'd been distracted by other matters, but now that Rezan mentioned it, Zek took a closer look and quickly realized what Rezan meant.

"They're almost all special forces," Rezan said, vocalizing Zek's unspoken realization. "I've never seen so many special forces troopers gathered in one place before."

Looking around, Zek realized Rezan was right. More than half the crowd was sporting some sort of purple or jet black armor on. In fact, aside from Zek and Rezan, there appeared to be very few "regular" soldiers around.

"They must all be hunting for the Demons," Zek speculated out loud. "This must be the central command center for the Demon hunt."

"The High Prophets have dedicated quite a lot of resources in finding these Demons," Rezan noted. "I -"

Whatever Rezan was about to say next, Zek never found out as, at that moment, there was a loud commotion coming from the other side of the building, and looking up, Zek could see a large crowd gathering.

"What is that?" Zek asked. He and Rezan shared a questioning look before the two of them abandoned their food and hurried over.

Over the crowd, Zek could just barely make out a line of people being led down a nearby staircase, but as Zek drew closer, he realized it wasn't _just_ people...

...it was a line of humans. More specifically, a line of human _prisoners_.

Each of the humans had been stripped of their gear and weapons, making them look rather small and pathetic in comparison to how they normally appeared. Each of them had their hands clasped around the back of their heads as they were led to the ground floor, and nearly forced to intermingle with the ever growing crowd of Covenant soldiers. In the meantime, said crowd was yelling and jeering, and screaming out insults at the humans.

"Look at the worms! Look how they wiggle!" a nearby Ruuhtian was shouting.

"Dead to all the heretics!" an Unggoy standing right beside Zek screamed.

"Let me kill them and serve up their flesh for a meal!" someone else was shouting. "Especially the females; their bodies are especially succulent!"

Someone threw something, which hit one of the humans square in the face, and the crowd let out a loud cry of laughter as the human fell over. The Unggoy Special Operations guards paid no heed, only pausing long enough to drag the human back to its feet, but when a regular Unggoy Minor carrying a stick charged forward to hit one of the humans with, the guards launched into action. Grabbing their fellow Unggoy, they punched and kicked him until he was subdued, before shoving him back into the crowd.

"Get back!" the guard yelled, in a surprisingly deep voice for an Unggoy. "All of you, get back! The Shipmaster wants all these prisoners alive and untouched, and he will put to death anyone who dares disobey!"

The crowd, however, was hardly deterred by the guard's threats.

"They killed my bond brother!" one of the Unggoy's was yelling. "Let me kill them!"

The guard immediately punched the speaker in the mouth, but it wasn't enough.

"Kill them!" the crowd was starting to chant and much to Zek's own surprised, he found himself chanting alongside with them.

 _ **FWOOZ!**_

The entire room reflexively ducked at the sound of a plasma rifle being discharged and Zek looked around wildly for the source. He spotted Evocatus 'Quetshadee standing at the top of the staircase with a smoke plasma rifle in hand. Next to him was -

Zek automatically felt the saliva in his mouth dry up in fear. Standing next to 'Quetshadee was a Sangheili clad in golden ceremonial armor.

A Zealot.

But not just any Zealot...

Zek always had a bit of troubling telling Sangheili's apart. It was their mandibles; they all looked the same to Zek. However, as a member of the Fleet, Zek knew this Sangheili very well:

Shipmaster Iam 'Oteree. Zealot and commander of _all_ Covenant forces present in this system.

"These humans are to remain alive until I decide otherwise," ''Oteree declared in the now very quiet room. "Any being who dares defy this command, will be declared a _heretic_ , and treated as such!"

Slowly walking down the stairs with 'Quetshadee in tow, 'Oteree looked around the room, as if daring anyone to protest, but no one did. In fact, no one in the room could even met the Shipmaster's eyes. Everyone bowed their heads and did their best to avoid staring directly at 'Oteree, least they somehow incur his wrath.

Reaching the ground, 'Oteree stopped right in front of the Unggoy who had attempted to attack the humans with a stick. The Unggoy immediately dropped the stick, which hit the ground with a loud clatter, before prostrating himself in front of 'Oteree. 'Oteree glanced at 'Quetshadee, who jerked his head and immediately the Unggoy guards leapt into action. They roughly grabbed the prostrated Unggoy, who didn't protest, and dragged him away.

'Oteree didn't even as much as glance at the scene.

"Take these prisoners outside," 'Oteree growled. "I will question them myself out there. It is clear this rabble is unable to control themselves. These prisoners are to remain alive; the Minister demands it."

Without another word, 'Oteree turned and headed for the door. There was a mad scramble as all Covenant soldiers hurriedly moved to get out of his way, and in the gap that developed, the remaining Unggoy, led by 'Quetshadee, proceeded to force the prisoners out of the building.

It took quite a few moments after the entire procession had left the building before the crowd began to stir once more. It first started with a few twitches and tremors from some of the Unggoy, followed by some slight murmuring from some Kig-Yar, before the crowd as a whole abruptly decided it was safe to return to whatever they had been doing before the humans had arrived. The crowd started to separate, and the noise within the building began to return to its original level.

For his part, all Zek could do was sigh in relief. Zealots were finicky creatures; even more arrogant and short tempered than the regular rank and file Sangheili; there was no telling what exactly would attract the ire of a Zealot.

Zek turned to Rezan, only to see a troubled look on his friend's face.

"What." Zek demanded.

"I wonder what will become of those humans..." Rezan began.

"Who cares?" Zek bluntly replied. "They're heretics: they'll get exactly what they deserve."

"I guess," Rezan reluctantly agreed, and Zek couldn't help but squawk in irritation. It was strange: in terms of religion, Rezan was a far more devote member of the Great Journey than Zek ever was, yet he seemed strangely sympathetic to the heretical humans. It seemed to Zek to be quite the contradiction: how could one be so devote, yet doubt the actions of the Covenant's Most Holy Warriors?

"Come on," Zek gestured. "Let's return to our meal before we are commanded to return to the city and resume our hunt."

"Yes," Rezan agreed. "Probably a good idea."

They walked back to where they had left their food and as they arrived, as Zek felt the shudder of an aircraft passing by overhead. Grabbing his can and shoving a talonful of food into his mouth, as he sat there, chewing, Zek tried to think of something to say to Rezan, some sort of topic for a conversation, but nothing really came to mind.

"Rezan, I -" Zek started to say, when he noticed another crowd was beginning to gather again at the back of the room. This time, instead of rage or fear, the crowd had adopted an air of reverence. Zek looked around to see -

He let out a loud gasp and quickly surged to his feet. Blindly reaching behind him, he slapped around until he hit Rezan's snout, who looked up with a hiss of annoyance and a curse on his lips, only to cut himself off as he immediately saw what Zek was gesturing at. He too, hurriedly shot to his feet.

Descending gracefully down the staircase in an anti-gravity chair and escorted by a small Lance of bodyguards, was a member of the Covenant High Council: a San'Shyuum. At first, Zek thought it was one of the High Prophets, but then he realized that wasn't possible as this San'Shyuum was far too young to be one of the Most Holy Trinity. This one had to be a Minister of some sorts.

Still, as a simple Kig-Yar, Zek had never seen a San'Shyuum with his own two eyes because, as both the political and religious leaders of the entire Covenant, San'Shyuum were far too important to be visiting the likes of Zek and Rezan. So, to see one here and now, Zek couldn't help but be flabbergasted.

"A Minister of the High Council? Here? On this world?" he heard Rezan mutter out from the side of his mouth.

"Well, the entire fleet was reassigned to be under the control of a single San'Shyuum Minister. This must be the one," Zek muttered back.

"No, I understand that. However, what I don't understand is why the Minister of Contentment would be here, on the surface of this world, when it has yet to be rendered safe? I do hope the holy one is being protected."

"Guess this hunt for the Demons is more important than we thought. And the Minister's presence here certainly explains the amount of defenses dedicated to one simple firebase," Zek noted. He frowned when he noticed a single Jiralhanae Stalker walking near the Minister. The Minister had a Jiralhanae bodyguard? That was an... interesting choice, given that everyone in the Covenant knew the blood feud between the Sangheili and the Jiralhanae was far worse than the one between the Ruuhtians and the T'vaoans.

Both Zek and Rezan stood there, at attention, in respectful silence as the Minister and his escorts traveled to the same door the Shipmaster and the human prisoners had exited from. Perhaps the Minister had been hoping to watch the interrogation himself?

At any case, as soon as the Minister had left the room, Zek finally allowed himself to relax.

"Well, this day is certainly turning out to be different," he noted.

"It is certainly a blessed day," Rezan excitedly corrected, his earlier discomfort about the fate of the human prisoners forgotten. "We should consider ourselves lucky Zek: how often do Ruuhtians like us get to see not only the Shipmaster of the entire fleet, but also one of the holy Ministers of the High Council with our very own eyes?"

Zek shot him a confused look. "It is not as if we were able to interact with either of them."

"Yes, but they were close enough for us to be able to bask in their presence!" Rezan retorted, sounding as if he was in a daze and Zek had to resist the urge to snort in exasperation, if only to avoid offending his friend. There were some days where Zek was honestly jealous of Rezan's faith. To be able to believe in an ideal with such certainty? Zek personally could never do it.

But then, there were days like today where he wondered if Rezan was taking it a bit too far with his devotion...

"Well, it pleases me that you are so pleased," Zek said as neutrally as he could.

"I wonder what it would be like to sit on the Council," Rezan unexpectedly asked. "To not only be able to sit side by side the Sangheili as an equal, but to also see the High Prophets in all their glory!"

This time, Zek couldn't stop the derisive laugh that escape his mouth.

"That would be naught but a dream: the Kig-Yar have no presence on the Covenant Council," Zek pointed out. "And even if we did, the Matriarchs would be the ones to become councilors, not you."

"Yes, I know. But, could you just imagine what it would be like?"

Zek tried, he really did, to see what Rezan found so appealing. But when Zek thought of the Council, all he could think of was political power plays, non-stop committee meetings, and endless religious ceremonies, none of which interested Zek in the least. But, then again...

"Well, I suppose it would certainly be more enjoyable than having to trudge through the thick snow, searching for Demons," Zek allowed. "At the very least, it would undoubtedly be _warmer_."

Polishing off the remaining contents of his can, Zek tossed it to the side and climbed to his feet.

"Come Rezan," he declared. "Let's find some place we can warm up before we're forced to return to the cold and -"

 _ **BOOM!**_

 _ **EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!**_

The entire building shook as something exploded just outside. Zek looked up in dismay as the grating shrill of an alarm began sounding overhead.

"What is this?" Rezan asked, looking worried. Before Zek could respond -

 _"We are under attack!"_ someone yelled. _"All warriors, defensive formations!"_

"Voi paska!" Zek spat out.

"The Minister! We need to protect the Minister!" Rezan screamed.

"I know!" Zek yelled back as he raced for the place he had left his weapon. He shoved his way past several warriors as the entire room had exploded into action. Sangheili commanders were shouting orders, numerous Kig-Yar were preparing their shields, while the Unggoy were all on the verge of panicking.

Reaching the weapon's rack he had left his weapon, Zek was annoyed to find someone else had already claimed his Type-51 carbine. However, sitting in a rack nearby was a Type-50 particle beam rifle and a Type-31 subanese crystal rifle, both of which Zek seized.

"Rezan!" Zek yelled as he tossed the crystal rifle over before glancing at the particle rifle in his hands. It had a full charge; good.

"Zek, we must go!" Rezan screamed and started to head for the door, where the sounds of plasma and blamite fire had erupted, but before Zek and Rezan could get far, a heavy hand landed on their shoulders.

"All Kig-Yar sharpshooters, to the roof!" the Sangheili Major demanded, and with a start, Zek realized because of their weapons, the Sangheili had assumed he and Rezan were sharpshooters. Still, the roof would be further away from the firefight that, from the sounds of, was only being waged just outside, so Zek had no interest in protesting.

"As you command sire!" Zek yelled as he turned and ran for the staircase. He and Rezan began racing up the stairs as every other warrior in the room began pouring out of the building.

"How could the humans have gotten so close!? And how could they have known to strike now, when the Minister was on the planet!?" Rezan demanded to know as they ran, but Zek had no answers.

"I don't know!" Zek yelled back.

"Could there be a traitor among our ranks, informing the humans of our every action?"

"That is not for us to determine! We just need but focus on defending this base!"

Zek reached the top of the stairs and burst through a door, emerging on the roof of the building. By now, the plasma fire had reached a crescendo though strangely enough, Zek wasn't picking up the distinctive sound of human weapons, which was odd as humans were many things, but passive fighters they were not.

Glancing over the side of the roof, Zek quickly found out the reason for the seemingly one sided battle: the human prisoners he had seen earlier had somehow managed to escape their bonds and captured several Covenant weapons, of which they had promptly turned against their former users.

"Heretics in the clear!" Zek screamed. He spotted one human armed with a Type-25 pistol, gunning down a nearby Unggoy and Zek hurried leveled his Type-50 and fired.

 _ **FWOOZ!**_

Zek's first shot missed the human entirely, hitting the ground right next to it and leaving a nasty burn mark. Zek's shot did cause the human to duck, and then run for cover, but fortunately Zek's position over the battle meant there was no place for the human to hid.

Re-sighting his rifle, Zek fired once more.

 _ **FWOOZ!**_

His beam lanced right through the human, spearing the creature about where the liver on a Kig-Yar would be. The human instantly collapsed, and Zek hurriedly searched for another target. One of the humans must have captured a Type-33 blamite launcher, as the air was filled with subanese projectiles, but Zek was able to trace the rounds back to its source. A human was crouched behind one of the recharging stations, firing at the reinforcements pouring out from the inside of the building. Given the position of the human, Zek didn't have the best shot, so instead, Zek opened fire on the recharging station itself.

 _ **FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ!**_

Firing until his rifle grew too hot for him to handle, Zek was nevertheless able to watch as the battery located within the recharging station exploded, taking the human with it.

"There's a human sharpshooter on the bridge!" Rezan suddenly began screaming.

"What!? What bridge!?" Zek distractedly yelled back.

"That one! Over on my side! Over -"

 _CRACK!_

"AHHHH!"

Rezan started screaming and Zek looked over in alarm to see blood squirting out from Rezan's hand.

"My hand!" Rezan was screaming. "That ryökäle shot my hand!"

"Where is it!?"

" _That_ bridge!"

Rezan pointed and for the first time, Zek noticed the bridge sitting near the edge of the base's perimeter. Dashing over towards Rezan's side of the roof, Zek began scanning for the human sharpshooter. He spotted a destroyed human aircraft laying in the middle of the bridge and just in front of the aircraft, Zek could just barely make out the figure of a small human. He hurriedly leveled his rifle and -

 _CRACK PING!_

"AHH!" Zek let out a shriek of alarm as a bullet struck his Type-50, destroying it completely and sending Zek diving for cover. "VITTU!"

Tossing aside his now useless weapon, Zek grabbed the Type-31 from Rezan, who was still sobbing, "My hand!"

"I know!" Zek frustratedly shouted. "Just keep your head down! We can't leave until that ryökäle human sharpshooter has been eliminated!"

Throwing all caution to the wind, Zek carefully poked his head up, only to see someone else had managed to locate the area the sharpshooter had been firing from. Shells from a Type-30 were bombarding the bridge and of the sharpshooter, Zek saw no sign.

Figuring the human was at least being suppressed enough, Zek grabbed a hold of Rezan.

"Rezan, let's go!" he demanded, and together they stumbled back towards the staircase and back down to the ground floor.

"PHYSICIAN!" Zek began screaming as soon as they reached the ground floor. "PHYSICIAN!"

A Kig-Yar, an Ibie'shan, came running up. "What happened!?"

"He shot my hand! That ryökäle shot my hand!" Rezan immediately screamed and lifting his hand up, Zek was finally able to see how bad it was. And it was bad: the human had somehow managed to sever two of Rezan's three fingers while the third was merely hanging on by a couple strands of flesh. Zek couldn't help but grimace.

"Set him down here!" the Physician demanded and as Zek helped ease Rezan down to the floor, the Physician pulled out a medical laser. "This will help!"

Zek anxiously hovered around Rezan as the Physician worked on trying to stop the bleeding. Meanwhile, plasma fire continued to ring out as the battle raged outside. At one point though, Zek thought he heard the bellowing of an angry Sangheili, but he couldn't tell who or what had been said, so he ignored it.

"Will he need to be evacuated?" Zek demanded to know.

"I don't know yet," the Physician admitted. "It will depend on the availability of the transports, but ever since these cursed humans have returned to the skies, our fighters have been hard pressed protecting everything. Your bond brother might have to stay here."

Rezan looked worried and Zek couldn't blame him. With the battle raging outside, it only went to show that nowhere was safe, even deep within a firebase. And the last thing Zek would want was to be wounded in the middle of hostile territory, as humans were a bit like jörmungandr: the moment they tasted blood, they went crazy.

The door to the room suddenly opened and Evocatus 'Quetshadee came running back in. Zek glanced at him, and then did a quick double take. 'Quetshadee looked _pissed_ while at the same time, absolutely _terrified_ , and that sight scared Zek. What could cause a Sangheili such great terror?

"You, you, you, and you: come with me, right now!" 'Quetshadee snapped and to Zek's surprise, he was one of the ones 'Quetshadee had pointed out. Zek was tempted to ask why, but one look at 'Quetshadee's face and whatever words Zek had were instantly swallowed.

Making sure he had his weapon as well as extra charges, Zek gave Rezan a reassuring pat on the shoulder before running after 'Quetshadee. Emerging outside, Zek was able to see the source of 'Quetshadee's distress.

The very Minister Zek had seen mere moments ago was dead. His body was awkwardly sprawled out across the ground while his head... well, it appeared to be all over the place.

Zek was flabbergasted by what he saw. He had never heard of a San'Shyuum being killed while in the field. In fact, a small part of him had been even wondering if they could even _be_ killed. And yet, here one was. No wonder 'Quetshadee looked so scared. The High Prophets would _not_ be pleased.

Standing around the Minister's body was an entire Lance of some nervous looking Ruuhtians, and one _very_ infuriated Shipmaster.

"Take your File and go hunt down the rest of those insects," 'Oteree was snarling at a nearby Sangheili. "Slaughter them all: it was a mistake to have taken them prisoner. Evocatus 'Quetshadee!"

"Sire!"

"The death of our beloved Minister was no doubt by the hands of the Demon." 'Oteree pointed at the bridge the human sharpshooter had been. "Find it, and _**BRING ME ITS HEAD**_!"

"It shall be done!" 'Quetshadee turned to the warriors he had gathered. "Warriors, with me! For blood! For vengeance! In the name of the Minister of Contentment!"

With a loud war cry, the File charged forward, covering the distance between them and the bridge in mere moments. Zek wasn't sure what 'Oteree hoped to achieve as, if the Demon hadn't already been killed, it most undoubtedly would have left the area by now. Nevertheless, he didn't want to direct 'Quetshadee's ire on to himself, so he kept his questions to himself as he charged forward with everyone else.

Reaching the bridge, 'Quetshadee began barking out orders.

"You and you, get up there and secure the top," 'Quetshadee demanded and to Zek's horror, he realized 'Quetshadee was pointing at him and another Kig-Yar, a T'vaoans Minor. "The rest of us shall protect you from here."

Zek and the T'vaoan exchanged a nervous look.

"NOW!" 'Quetshadee roared.

Seeing no other option, Zek slowly placed his Type-31 onto his back and got ready to climb onto the top of the bridge. He could only hope his earlier assessment was correct, and the Demon had already left.

Trying to climb as slowly as he could without making it seem like he was dragging his feet, Zek carefully ascended. The top of the bridge came faster than he could have imagined, and the next thing he knew, he was moments from swinging over the side and onto the top of the bridge.

Praying to whatever Gods that were listening, Zek and the T'vaoan exchanged one last look, and Zek made the Kig-Yar hand sign for good luck, one that the T'vaoan returned. Inhaling sharply, Zek abruptly leapt onto the bridge -

\- and found himself standing there with no Demons or humans in sight. He let out a sigh of relief.

"The area is safe!" Zek called out over the edge. The response was not quite what he expected.

"What!? How could there be no one there!?"

Zek exchanged a startled look with the T'vaoan. He didn't know what to say.

There was a loud grunt that caused Zek to jump in fright, and he looked around to see 'Quetshadee and the rest of the File awkwardly climbing over the edge of the bridge. 'Quetshadee in particular seemed to be having quite a bit of trouble, and briefly Zek wondered if he should help, but then he realized any such help from him would cause 'Quetshadee great humiliation, humiliation 'Quetshadee would feel the need to return in kind, so all Zek did was turn away and awkwardly wait for 'Quetshadee to right himself.

"How can there be no one here!?" 'Quetshadee demanded to know the moment he was upright. To Zek's surprise, 'Quetshadee actually sounded indignant, like he wanted a Demon to have been here, which was abnormal to Zek. As bloodthirsty as Sangheili were, Zek would have thought even an Evocatus would have been hesitant to face a Demon in close combat.

Insight occurred to Zek in a flash. It wasn't so much as 'Quetshadee wanted to fight a Demon, it was more he needed a body to present to the High Prophets when the High Prophets demanded blood in retribution for the loss of one of their kind. And if 'Quetshadee or the Shipmaster couldn't present a Demon head to the High Prophets...

"Spread out!" 'Quetshadee roared. "Find the Demon!"

At this point, Zek was absolutely sure the Demon was long gone, but he wasn't about to argue. Lifting his Type-31, he feebly began kicking the snow around, trying to make it look as if he was searching for clues, without actually having too.

"Evocatus! I have discovered something!"

Zek's head snapped up at the call. It was that T'vaoan Minor, the one that had initially climbed up to the bridge with Zek. The T'vaoan was crouched by that destroyed human aircraft that Zek remembered seeing during the fight.

"This must have been where the Demon was firing from," the T'vaoan reported, pointing at a small imprint in the snow as well as the yellow metal cylinders all human weapons seemed to leave behind.

"The coward," he added as an afterthought.

The rest of the File growled their agreement, however Zek took one look at the imprint and resist the urge to snort.

"That's not the mark of a Demon," he muttered under his breath.

"What did you say Kig-Yar!?"

Zek jumped and looked around wildly, only to see 'Quetshadee staring at him with an intense look on his face. Oh no. Did 'Quetshadee actually hear him?

"Nothing of importance sire," Zek tried to assure him, but 'Quetshadee clearly was not believing him.

"No," 'Quetshadee growled. "You said this was not the mark of a Demon. Explain, now!"

Realizing there was no way around it, Zek opened his mouth to elaborate.

"The Holy Scriptures are very clear about the description of the Demons sire," Zek quickly said, trying to remember everything the Holy Scriptures of the Covenant had said, only it had been a long time since Zek had bothered looking at them, and he was regretting that decision now. Still, it sounded plausible and 'Quetshadee didn't seemed inclined to remove his head, so Zek continued.

"As stated by the Scriptures, Demons are large terrifying beast of the Uncleaned," Zek recited from memory. "'Their hides are as thick as armor and colored as green as that of the Parasites. Their faces are covered by those souls who have been abandoned and set aflame by the fires of the Great Journey, and their bodies are weighed down by the sins of the Heretics.'"

Zek pointed at the imprint in the ground. "That? That was not made by any Demon. It's too shallow for that. This surely was made by a mere human."

"You dare claim our beloved Minister was assassinated by a mere human!?" 'Quetshadee demanded.

Zek nervously swallowed. "I do, sire."

'Quetshadee seemed to have been taken by surprised by Zek's answer, because he immediately calmed down.

"And how would you know what a Demon would look like, Kig-Yar," he demanded to know, staring at Zek through narrow eyes.

"I... I have seen them sire. With my own eyes. I was aboard the _Hammer_ when the Demons dare defile her," Zek stammered.

'Quetshadee took a closer look at Zek, and seemingly for the first time, noticed the Fleet insignia imprinted on Zek's armor.

"So you were..." he growled, before whirling around on the first T'vaoan. "This one claims this is the mark of a mere human! What say _you!?_ "

The T'vaoan nervously glanced in Zek's direction, and Zek felt his heart freeze as he realized what this T'vaoan was about to do. No! In order to save face, this T'vaoan would claim Zek was nothing but a liar and that he was the one that was correct! Stupid, traitorous T'vaoans -

"I believe this Ruuhtian is correct in his analysis sire, and I, premature in my judgement," the T'vaoan nervously admitted. "I humbly beg thee for forgiveness."

...huh. That was... unexpected.

'Quetshadee growled, and at first Zek thought he was about lash out, but all he said was, "Then we must report this to the Shipmaster."

With that, he clambered off the bridge, leaving the rest of the File to follow. Zek waited until everyone else had left, until it was just him and the T'vaoan, before turning to his fellow Kig-Yar. As much as he disliked T'vaoans, Zek supposed he should at least thank this one for reinforcing his conclusion, even if doing so might have cost the T'vaoan his life.

"Thank you," Zek simply said. "I am Zek. You are?"

The T'vaoan grinned. "I am also Zek," he said.

It took Zek a moment to understand. The T'vaoan's name was also Zek, though undoubtedly it was spelling the T'vaoan way of "Ziik" instead of "Zek."

"You are very different from the rest of your people Ziik," Zek couldn't help but note. Ziik made a gesticulation.

"Perhaps you don't know the T'vaoans as well as you think you do," he said simply. "We need to return to the base."

"I agree," Zek said. He waited until Ziik had leapt from the top of the bridge. Taking one last look around the area, Zek moved to follow him.

Dashing through the snow, Zek rejoined the rest of the File near where the Minister's body still laid. 'Oteree stood over the body, staring at the former Minister with a furious expression on his face, though he looked up as 'Quetshadee and the rest of the File approached.

"Well?" he demanded.

"The cowards have fled," 'Quetshadee reported and Zek could hear 'Oteree grinding his teeth in anger. "But I will be able to track them."

"Do so," 'Oteree hissed. "I want the Demon prostrated on the ground in front of me by the end of this planet's cycle."

Zek could see 'Quetshadee hesitating ever so slightly, a move that 'Oteree also noticed.

"Speak."

"It was not a Demon," 'Quetshadee reluctantly reported.

Zek reflexively took a nervous step back as 'Oteree whirled around.

"Explain," 'Oteree growled.

"We searched for signs of a Demon. We found none. Instead, we found signs that a _human_ had taken position on the bridge, and that a _human_ was responsible for the murder of our beloved Minister."

'Oteree stared closely at 'Quetshadee. "And you are sure of this?"

Zek could see 'Quetshadee's eyes flicker towards him ever so slightly, and Zek mentally braced himself to have to try and explaining his reasoning again, but this time to a much more deadly Shipmaster. But ultimately, that didn't happen as 'Quetshadee said instead –

"I am sure."

'Oteree merely grunted in acknowledgement, leaving Zek to silently sigh in relief.

The meeting was suddenly interrupted by a loud commotion, and Zek looked around to see an entire Lance of Special Operations Sangheili approaching them, with a single Sangheili Minor and two T'vaoans in tow. Zek recognized the T'vaoans as the two perimeter guards that had first accosted his File when they had initially arrived at the firebase.

"Shipmaster," one of the Sangheili, a Special Operations Officer, spoke up. "We found the path the Demon took to infiltrate our base –"

"Human," 'Oteree interrupted. The Officer paused.

"Pardon, sire?"

"It was no Demon, it was a human," 'Oteree growled. "A mere human was allowed to penetrate our defenses, _and assassinate our Minister!"_

'Oteree lurched towards the Officer, who automatically took a step back in alarm.

"Who was guarding that sector of the perimeter!?" 'Oteree demanded to know. The Officer wordlessly gestured at the two T'vaoans, who immediately whimpered as 'Oteree turned his attention to them.

"You two were the guards?" 'Oteree demanded. At once, both T'vaoans threw themselves onto the ground in front of him.

"Mercy sire!" the Major begged. "We were but replacements for the one who had abandoned his position!" The Major pointed a talon in the Sangheili Minor's direction. "He and his File were the ones that should have been guarding the perimeter, not us! The blame lies with him!"

'Oteree looked up at the Sangheili as the two T'vaoans continued to beg. Then, with a speed that Zek almost failed to follow, 'Oteree whipped out his plasma sword and swiftly decapitated both T'vaoans in a single blow. His sword was deactivated and back on his hip by the time the T'vaoans heads hit the ground, and it took about everything Zek had to avoid flinching as their bodies followed soon after.

"You," 'Oteree growled as he casually stepped over the rapidly cooling corpses of the T'vaoans. "Who are you?"

"I am Minor Kitun 'Refumee," the Minor proudly declared. Zek could see 'Oteree staring very closely at him.

"You are of House 'Refumee, are you not?"

"I am," 'Refumee replied.

"House 'Refumee is a proud and noble clan," 'Oteree declared. "I have proudly led many of your clanmates into glorious battle after glorious battle, where they have won glory and honor for themselves, and for that of your House."

"As I have heard," 'Refumee replied, bowing his head slightly.

"Yet, you have chosen to dishonor your ancestors by abandoning your sworn and scared duty?" 'Oteree rumbled, reminding Zek very much of a volcano that was about to erupt. Zek carefully began taking a few steps backwards as he waited for the explosion, but unfortunately for 'Refumee, he didn't seem to notice. "Explain yourself."

"There was an explosion," 'Refumee explained. "Several of our warriors were killed or injured. Not only did they require aid, the explosion matched that of several cowardly traps set by the Demons. I knew your orders, and I knew my duty: I had to investigate."

"So you abandoned your post? You vacated the defenses of this very firebase and allowed a human, _a mere human!_ to infiltrate our defenses and arrive within striking distance of our beloved Minister!?" 'Oteree snarled.

'Refumee stiffened. "I did what was expected of me," he insisted. "Shipmaster, surely you would have done the same in my position."

" **Do not presume to know what I may or may not have done in your position you insolent childling!"** 'Oteree abruptly roared, causing all present to hastily rear back. **"You abandoned your post in order to seek personal glory, but all you have done is brought shame and dishonor to your House! Because of your** _ **failure**_ **, your clan's name will forever be associated with disgrace and degradation!** **House 'Refumee's saga wall will forever be stricken from the records! The proud history of House 'Refumee: forever discredited! Your clanmates, casted out from their ancestral homes and treated no better than mere Unggoy! All because** _ **YOU**_ **could not refrain from indulging in your narcissist desires!"**

Zek could practically hear 'Refumee's arrogance _snap_ , as the full weight of his failure abruptly cascaded over him, and he began to sweat. The smell of fresh fear began to permeate the air.

"I will regain my honor by the victories I shall achieve on this very battlefield!" 'Refumee desperately declared, but 'Oteree shook his head.

"No. You shall not," he bluntly said. "For a failure of his magnitude, there is but one recourse left for you."

Zek jumped as 'Quetshadee abruptly pulled out a deactivated energy long knife, and handed the hilt over to 'Oteree, who took it and shoved it against 'Refumee's chest.

"You know what to do," was all he said, before walking away.

Zek could see 'Refumee was practically crying as he stared at the hilt, and then up at 'Quetshadee's unsympathetic face, before slowly nodding. At that, 'Refumee turned around and began removing his combat harness. Zek would have stood there, watching more, if not for 'Quetshadee turning around to glare at the remaining Covenant warriors in the area, and Zek abruptly realized he need to make himself scarce.

He quickly scurried away, but before he could get too far, he heard the sound of an energy blade being activated, followed by the sounds of someone grunted in pain. The smell of burning flesh started to fill Zek's nostrils, and he almost turned around to find out why, when he heard another energy blade behind activated before it was swung through the air. The sound of a body hitting the ground made Zek decide he wasn't actually all that interested in what was going on, and he quickly ran off to go check up on Rezan.

As he left, he could hear 'Oteree bellowing, " _Find the Demon! And find the human assassin! I want both brought to me…_

 _ **ALIVE!"**_

* * *

1\. The Sangheili family name of 'Refumee is taken from the Sangheili character Sesa 'Refumee, the heretical Elite you fight against in _Halo 2'_ s level _The Arbiter_. He's the first "boss" you fight against when playing as the Arbiter.

When writing this chapter, I had this idea that I thought would be kind of cool, to have a minor Elite character that would be forced to commit ritual suicide because of some made up failure, and it would turn out that that Elite was the cousin/brother/close friend of Sesa 'Refumee, and out of anger, he turns against the Covenant which is what allows him to discover the fact that the Great Journey is in fact one giant lie…

All in all, it's not something I'm really going to explore, but it was just something I thought I'd throw in just for fun.

In case it's not clear, the second part of this chapter ties in directly with chapter 9 of _Missing in Action,_ being the Covenant perspective of the events that took place during that chapter. The mysterious "sharpshooter" is of course, Moss. I thought it would be fun to expand on just how Moss was able to get close enough to the Prophet to assassinate him without setting off any alarms. As it was kind of hinted at, but actually shown here, he just sort of accidently stumbled upon the opportunity.

As for the first half, that's intended to tie in with the first half of chapter 27, the last time Zek appeared in this fiction. As mentioned in the author notes for that chapter, Doc Falco was a minor character from _Missing in Action_ , who disappeared after the end of chapter 4 of that story. As revealed in chapter 27, Falco had actually be captured by the Covenant, tortured by a trio of Grunts, and granted a mercy killing (of which the UNSC has confused with a mere execution) by Rezan.


	31. Chapter 31

A quick thanks to everyone who left a review last chapter! That includes CommissarBS, EQ, and Broman!

A couple quick responses:

CommissarBS: Thanks for the feedback! Actually, my editor, **Darkfire7881** , argued that I should have kept the chapter, but ultimately I felt I had to remove it because even when writing it, I feel like it didn't connect with the rest of the story very well. With that in mind, I think I'll be able to do a much better job making it more relevant to the plot the next time the chapter returns.

Broman: No worries about the reviews. While I certainly won't object to more reviews, I understand it's not always feasible. I'm just glad you're here :)

As to your question, unfortunately there's not going to be a whole lot more action coming up as my current goal is to start slowing things down as we (finally) reach the end of day 1. However, there's still quite a few more weeks of combat ahead, so there'll be plenty more Covenant killing in the future.

With that being said, I'm a little unsure of what you're asking: when you ask about Drone use, are you asking about having a scene take place from the perspective of a drone/drone operator? Like, an aircraft drone like a Wombat or like an infantry drone? Or are you merely asking for more inclusion of combat drones in general?

* * *

 **Chapter 31**

 **Central Byzas, Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
2309**

 **Selene**

"Hey. Riddle. Get up."

Selene slowly peeled her eyelids open to see Shin crouched right in front of her, shaking her shoulder.

"Shin?" she mumbled. "Did I fall asleep? I don't remember doing that."

In the dim light, she could see Shin bobbing his head. "Yeah, you conked out maybe two hours ago? Maybe more."

"God," Selene said between a yawn as she stretched, trying to get her blood flowing again through her numb limbs. "I feel like this is the tenth time I've passed out today. Why do I still feel so tired?"

"It's probably a combination of the cold, coupled with the stress of an alien invasion, as well as whatever injuries you may have sustained during that stairwell collapse," Shin suggested. "Either that, or the stim pack I gave you earlier is finally wearing out. Usually that leads to a crash afterwards."

Selene dimly nodded, only vaguely aware of the things Shin was saying. She felt she should have been more concerned, but she found she was just too tired to care.

Looking around, she noticed how dark it was, and that it appeared as if the Covenant ship had finally left.

"When did the Covenant leave?" she asked.

"'Bout an hour ago," Shin vaguely replied.

It took Selene's sleep addled brain almost a full minute to grasp what Shin just said.

"What!?" Selene gasped, immediately coming awake. "We could have left this area almost an hour ago!? Why didn't you wake me?"

Shin shrugged. "You looked like you could have used the rest," he replied but Selene vigorously shook her head.

"No, screw that," she insisted. "I can sleep when we're finally safe and sound outside of this city, and the faster we accomplish that, the better off we'll be. Seriously, don't you _want_ to get off this planet?"

"I do," Shin agreed, "but for me, that's not going to be an option."

"And why not!?"

Shin stared at her and even in the darkness, Selene could tell he was giving her a look that said he thought she was being particularly dense.

"I'm a soldier," he slowly explained. "There's a war going on. You do the math."

"Oh..." Selene said, feeling stupid, as she realized what he meant. She always forgot the rules were different for her as a cop versus a soldier: as a civilian, she had no business being on the battlefield but a soldier? Shin would probably just get thrown back into the rotation.

"But, hang on," Selene protested. "Would they really throw you back on the line like that? After everything you've been through?"

"Without a second thought," Shin promptly replied. "Especially if they need troops. Which, given this is the Covenant, they undoubtedly do."

Selene frowned. Well, that explained some of Shin's actions so far. But then again...

"Still, wouldn't you feel better if you were among all your friends instead of being stuck out here with me?" Selene pointed out.

"I would, actually," Shin agreed. "That's not to say you make bad company, it's just... you're no soldier. No offense."

Selene nodded, not offended in the least bit. How could she? There was nothing offensive about the truth.

"With that being said," Shin continued, "with it just being the two of us, we only get one shot at this, so we need to make sure we do it right. No second chances; anything happens, like we get shot or break an ankle because we're too tired to see where we're going, that's it. We'd be screwed, as there would be no one left to save us. So, no point in rushing things."

Selene bobbed her head as she slowly and painfully climbed to her feet. God, she felt so numb it actually hurt. Without her extra layers, she was freezing. She had to get moving again, if only to ensure she didn't freeze to death.

"So..." Selene began as she wiggled her toes to try and get her blood flowing. "Any idea how we're getting out of here?"

She gestured at the wall behind her that lead to the ground surface. At about four to six meters tall and practically vertical in height, it was way too tall for Selene to try and climb out without any equipment.

"I have, actually," Shin confirmed. "I've been looking around and unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a convenient ladder around however, there's a part of the wall that dips a bit lower than the rest; probably where the staircase had once connected. If I give you a boost, you should be able to make it to the top where there's bound to be _something_ that you could lower down for me to use to get out."

Selene nodded. That was as good of a plan as any.

"Alright," Shin announced as he dropped to a crouch at the base of the wall and cupped his hands together. "Come on then."

Walking forward, Selene carefully placed her foot onto Shin's hands.

"Might need to get onto my shoulders for this," Shin noted. "You ready?"

"Ready," Selene confirmed.

"Right. Well then: brace yourself."

Selene did her best not to fall over as, with a loud grunt of exertion, Shin lifted her straight up.

"Man, good thing you're so light otherwise, this might not have worked," Shin commented as Selene grabbed a hold of the wall. "How much do you weigh?"

"It's impolite to ask a lady that," Selene murmured, more out of habit than anything. More loudly she said, "Not sure. About forty six, forty seven kilograms?"

She could hear Shin laughing.

"What?"

"You are a very small person."

Selene let out an offended huff. She wasn't _that_ small, thank you very much. Sure, standing at about a hundred and sixty centimeters tall, she had been one of the smaller officers in her department. But she had always been able to hold her own!

Despite her petite stature, Shin hadn't been able to push her up all the way to the top. However, at this part of the wall, there was a large number of debris sticking out, giving Selene plenty of hand and footholds. Grunting and straining, Selene was able to claw her way to the surface.

Throwing herself onto the snow covered road, Selene laid there for a moment, trying to catch her breath. Damn cold was wearing out her body faster than she was used to.

"You know," she heard Shin call out from below, "if there was ever a time you could leave me, now would be it."

Selene sighed. What was it with Shin and abandoning people?

"Shin shut up," Selene hissed back. "Not getting into this discussion again."

She could hear Shin shrugging. "Just saying..."

He fell silent, allowing Selene to lay there in peace, watching as her every breath sent puffs of steam into the air.

However, Selene knew she couldn't lay there forever, so eventually, she forced herself to sit up and take a look around. It was dark, which was hardly surprising: at this time during the winter, Ambracia(1) had set a long time ago and with power having been knocked out by the invasion, there were no lights on.

Nevertheless, the lack of lighting couldn't hide the shear amount of destruction and damage that had been caused to this area. The roads were choke full of debris and rubble. All the sidewalks were cracked and the concrete slabs split apart like someone had taken a sledgehammer to each and every single one of them. Blast craters were everywhere, some of which were so deep they were exposing the underground utility conduits and sewage system to the freeze air. Entire buildings had collapsed, leaving the skyline fairly exposed. Fortunately, there were very few bodies, though Selene couldn't help but wonder why. She also wondered what caused all this damage. No doubt the collapse of the subway tunnel had caused its fair share, but surely this wasn't _all_ the result of that?

At any case, at the very least, with all this destruction, Selene was bound to find something, a ladder or some rope, that would help Shin up.

"Shin, I got to go look for a ladder or something," Selene announced. "I'll be back in a jiffy, okay?"

"Take your time. It's not like we've got anywhere urgent to get to..." Shin noted somewhat sardonically.

Scrambling to her feet, Selene dashed across the road to the nearest pile of rubble. It was too dark for her to exactly see what she was doing, so she was forced to work by touch. As a result, by the time she was able to find something she could use, her palms were covered with all sorts of cuts and scrapes, as her winter gloves not being designed to protect her hands from physical damage at all.

As Selene worked, she couldn't help but note how quiet it was. It was kind of creepy actually. Selene had spent many a night shift patrolling the city, looking for troublemakers, so she was used to being out this late. However, like most cities of this size and density, Byzas was a city that never really slept. There was always something going on every minute, every hour, every day of the year. Whether it be commuters on their way to work in the morning, or the late night party animals finally making their way homes, or even the crazy homeless people screaming at the top of their lungs about the latest government conspiracy, there was always something making some noise.

But right now, there was nothing, not even a whisper. It made Selene feel like the city was already dead. She couldn't even hear the sounds of fighting taking place in the distance like she had earlier today, which worried her. She obviously wasn't a soldier, but the lack of fighting couldn't be a good thing, could it?

Nevertheless, it certain gave Selene an incentive to want to work as fast as she could. The sooner she was out of this city, the better off she would feel.

Shoving away the last bit of debris, Selene ran back to what was left of the station with her prize. It was a little hard to tell exactly what she was carrying was, but it felt like some sort of stiff metal fence. Perhaps it was a fall protection fence that had once been mounted on the roof of one of the buildings in the area? Whatever the case was, the fence was long enough to reach the bottom of the hole, light enough for Selene to carry without much trouble, yet strong enough Selene was confident enough it would be able to support Shin's weight.

"Shin? I'm back, and I got something for you," Selene called out.

There was silence.

"Shin?" Selene called out, wishing she had a flashlight or something. She really couldn't see anything.

Again, there was nothing but silence.

"Joshua Shin!" Selene hollered, frowning. Did Shin fall asleep?

Picking up a small rock from the ground, she tossed it down the hole, and she could hear it clattering around, but aside from there, she didn't hear anything else. Now she was getting worried.

"Shin...?"

"BOO!"

Selene let out a loud shriek and nearly dropped her fence on her feet as she practically jumped a good meter into the air. Whipping out her sidearm, Selene whirled around, ready to unload her entire magazine into whoever had managed to sneak up from behind her. Unfortunately, her plan was foiled when she found herself getting deftly disarmed, her sidearm getting knocked out of her hand and landing on the ground some distance away, while someone grabbed her and threw herself into a chokehold.

Recalling all the self-defense lessons she had learned in the Jiu-Jitsu class she had been taking almost a month ago, Selene started to try and break the chokehold but before she could do more than grab the arm holding her in place, she heard Shin's voice saying into her ear, "Relax relax relax: it's just me. It's just me."

Selene instantly calmed down, though she kept her guard up until the person released her, allowing Selene to turn around and visually confirm that it was Shin.

"Shin...?" Selene whispered a bit uncertainly, her heart still racing with fear. Then the anger hit.

"What the fuck Shin!?" she snapped as he burst out laughing. The sight infuriated her and reflexively, she socked him in the shoulder but unfortunately with her frozen limbs, she wasn't able to hit that hard and all her blow did was cause Shin to laugh even harder. "What the fuck is wrong with you!?"

"Sorry sorry sorry," Shin quickly said, even though he didn't sound apologetic in the _least_ bit. "I couldn't help myself: the setup was too perfect."

"Dude, I could have fucking shot you!"

"Not without this, you couldn't," Shin glibly replied, producing her sidearm from behind his back and presenting it to her.

"Give me that," she snapped, ripping the gun out of his hands. She ejected the magazine and did a quick chamber check to make sure everything was still in working order.

"Sure sure," Shin agreed.

"Dammit Shin," Selene snarled as she stuffed her sidearm back into her holster. "That wasn't funny! This is not the time _or_ the place for this... this... childish nonsense!"

"I know," Shin admitted. "But the look on your face! Priceless!"

All Selene did was growl in response and Shin reached out and gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder.

"Light up, will you?" Shin commented. "It was just a joke."

It took just about everything Selene had to not pull out her gun and shoot him right then and there.

"DON'T FUCKING SAY THAT TO ME...!" Selene started to scream but quickly restrained herself. As much as Selene wanted to give Shin a piece of her mind, she knew this wasn't the time and place for it, as they were still very vulnerable to Covenant patrols and they had already made too much noise as it was. Plus, Selene needed to maintain her professionalism as one of the two of them had to be the adult of the group and Shin's so-called "prank" clearly showed he wasn't going to be it.

"Men: they _never_ grow up, do they?" Selene muttered darkly under her breath. "Almost makes me wish I _had_ left your ass there, god!"

Shaking her head, Selene did her best to turn her attention to other matters.

"How the hell did you get out of that hole without any help?" she asked instead.

"Yeah, about that... Well, it turns out there was a ladder on the far side of the room," Shin said, pointing. "Or, least the rubble collapsed in a way that formed a sort of makeshift ladder. Must have missed that the first time around. Whoops," he sheepishly added.

Selene couldn't help but feel that much more disgruntled.

"Spent all that time looking for something to help you with," she grumbled as she felt her heart finally start to return to normal. "Fucking - nearly gave me a damn heart attack. Least I know how Kingsley felt."

For some reason, Selene noticed Shin giving her a confused look.

"Kingsley...?" he asked.

Selene blankly stared at him. "Yeah, Kingsley. You know, my friend who - "

"No, I know who Kingsley is," Shin interrupted. "I was just trying to figure out the con... on, right. I get it now. Never mind."

Selene gave him an odd look, trying to figure out what he had been about to say, but now that her adrenaline rush had ended, exhaustion was now settling back in, leaving her tired and cranky.

"Well, now that you're done scaring the shit of me," Selene began, trying to mask the bitterness in her voice but failing, "we're both out of the hole: now what?"

"Now, we keep moving," Shin confidently replied, sounding very much like the professional soldier he should have been a moment ago. It was astonishing, really, how quickly Shin's attitude changed, and it almost made Selene forget about the giant man-child she had been dealing with a moment ago.

Almost.

"By the looks and sounds of it," Shin continued, "the Covies have vacated this area of the city. For what reason though, I couldn't tell you, as there's no obvious reason for them to abandon this sector, and that makes me nervous as that means the Covies could return at any moment. So, our best bet to make ourselves scarce. We don't want to keep walking all night though: in the dark, it's too easy to injure ourselves and plus, it's cold enough as it right now; it will only get colder as the night wears on."

"And you are not properly equipped for that," he pointed out as Selene involuntarily shivered.

"So, what's the plan?" Selene asked, rubbing her hands together to try and restore some feeling. She noticed she was bleeding slightly from one of her cuts, which was a problem because she hadn't even feel it opening up again.

"First, we got to get out of here. Maybe walk some four or five blocks; long enough our footprints we're leaving in the snow will be covered up. Then, find some shelter, hopefully some extra clothes for you, and then call it a night."

"Sounds good to me," Selene said. "Which direction."

Shin hesitated. "Ah... about that..."

"What?"

"Um, I don't have a compass, the sun's set, and obviously there's no landmarks," Shin said, gesturing at the destroyed city that surrounded them. "In a word: I'm lost. You know this city better than I do: any suggestions?"

Selene sighed as she took a look around. Realistically speaking, without any landmarks, she was pretty much in the same boat as Shin. But it _was_ true she was more familiar with the city than he was, so even an educated guess on her part would be better than a wild guess on Shin's part.

"You said we had to go north, right?" she asked as she looked around the area for something that seemed familiar.

"Well, technically I said it was our best bet but sure, we'll go with that."

Selene was too tired to even bother rolling her eyes.

"I think that is Logan Circle," Selene finally said after several minutes. She pointed to her left at a traffic circle on block down. "Which everyone always gets lost at because the signage is so bad. Which means north would be..."

Selene looked around before pointed forward. "That direction," she said with as much false confidence as she could muster.

"I think," she couldn't help but add.

Shin shrugged. "Good enough for me. You lead, I'll follow, 'k?"

Selene nodded.

"Then let's go."

They took off walking the street. The going was slow; with the road torn up the way it was and without any lights, Selene wanted to make sure she didn't accidently tripped and break an ankle, which seemed rather likely to happen given her rather stiff limbs. As she walked, Selene also made sure to look around, trying to spot some sort of landmark that would definitively tell her where she was. Unfortunately, no matter where she looked, all she saw was more destruction. It was as if an entire horde of giant toddlers had been unleashed on the city, and said toddlers had proceeded to do what toddlers normally do: grab at everything and break it. Buildings were cleanly knocked aside and rubble was all over the place.

Surprisingly though, for as bad as things were, there were absolutely no bodies to be found. It was almost as if someone had gone around the city, cleaning them up, which made Selene wonder if the Covenant had been the ones to do that, though she couldn't figure out the why. Based on everything she had heard, the Covenant didn't seem the type to give the dead their due respect, especially dead humans, so she it didn't seem likely to her the Covenant were the culprits. At the same time, who else could it have been?

"Shin?" Selene called out after several long minutes.

"Yeah?"

"Why aren't we seeing any bodies?"

"You know, I just wondering about that myself," Shin admitted. "Truth be told, I'm not sure why. Only thing I can think of: whatever the Covies were searching for earlier, might have been a person. And if it was, the Covies might be collecting bodies to make sure they hadn't already gotten him."

Selene nodded to herself. That seemed as good of an explanation as any.

"Either that, or it's feeding time for the Jackals."

Selene stopped dead in her tracks.

"What?" she exclaimed.

Shin cocked his head. "I said, 'maybe it's feeding time for the Jackals.' You know, those vulture-like aliens?"

"No, I know what a Jackal is," Selene said. "What I mean was: the Covenant eat _humans?"_

"Some of them do," Shin informed her. "Actually, most of them do come to think of it: Jackals, Drones, Brutes, and some Grunts I think. Probably not Hunters. Maybe even the Elites though I have a feeling they think they're too good to eat us."

Selene stared at him, unsure if he was being serious or not.

"Are you... pulling my leg?" she asked, suspiciously.

"I wish. I remember there was an incident on Draco III a couple months ago. Bunch of civilian that somehow failed to get evacuated in time literally got eaten alive. Saw the videos. Wasn't pretty." Shin gave her an odd look. "Covies are pretty well known for that sort of thing. How have you never heard that before?"

"I mean, I have," Selene admitted as she started walking again. "It's just... I thought that was just ONI propaganda! Kind of like, back in the day, it was all, 'We need to stop the Huns!' Or, 'Watch out for the Reds!' You know, that sort of thing."

"Well, I'm sure it's been exaggerated somewhat," Shin allowed. "But every lie should have some element of truth to it; that's what will makes them so believable after all. But in this case, no, it's all true."

Selene shivered, and this time it had nothing to do with the cold. That was just another reason she had to get out of this city as soon as possible.

Distracted as she was, Selene barely noticed the bundle sitting in the middle of the road until -

"Woahhh!" Selene let out a cry of alarm as she abruptly tripped over something that sent her sprawling to the ground.

Spitting out some of the snow that had somehow ended up in her mouth, she quickly patted herself down, checking for injuries, before looking back to see what she had tripped over. Part of the snow had been knocked over, revealing the outer edge of a blanket. Laying under that blanket was -

"Holy crap!" Selene yelped, rearing back in alarm at the sight of the body that was lying under the blanket. She fumbled to pull out her pistol. "Fuck. Fuck!"

Shin marched over and roughly grabbed her by the arm. "Calm down!" he snapped. "Stop screaming. Stop screaming! It's just a body, it's not going to hurt you!"

Shin's voice somehow managed to cut through Selene's panicking mind, allowing her to calm down and realize what she was doing. Her heart racing, Selene nevertheless shut her mouth with a mute click, and lowered her firearm.

Normally, Selene wasn't too bothered by the sight of a dead body. She'd been a cop long enough and this city was big enough where the discovery of a dead body, while saddening, was hardly shocking any longer. However, given the environment, coupled with everything that was going on, plus the fact she and Shin had just noted there were no bodies around whatsoever, to unexpectedly see this one had really caught Selene off guard.

"You good?" Shin demanded, and Selene nodded. Her heart was still racing, but at least she was calm enough to be rational.

In the meantime, Shin had walked over to the body and was currently giving it a cool look. Reaching down, he grabbed hold of the blanket and ripped it off the ground, revealing the body in all its glory. Curious, Selene walked over and joined Shin by his side.

At first, Selene thought the body was that of a woman's, given how small it was, but one look at the body's face instantly disabused her of that notion: no, the body was definitely that of a man's, only a really short one. In fact, the man looked almost as small, if not smaller, than Selene was.

Next, she noted the uniform the man was wearing. It had been torn to shreds by something, but it was very clearly that of a UNSC uniform. All the man's equipment was gone however, and his body armor had been destroyed to the point of uselessness.

"Hmm," Shin commented as he poked at the body with his foot. "UNSC Army. But not from one of the local garrisons."

"How can you tell?" Selene asked.

"He's wearing the standard brown fatigues of the UNSC Army," Shin noted. "But all local garrisons would have switched over to white camo already because of winter. Might have been on leave."

He suddenly bent over and plucked at the dead man's sleeve

"Well, you're a long way from home," Selene thought she heard Shin say.

"What do you mean?"

Shin half-turned to show Selene the patch that had been crookedly sewn onto the sleeve.

"This here is the divisional patch for the 222nd Airborne Division," he told her. "They're garrisoned out of Skopje, which is a long way from Actium. Though, last I heard they were on Newsaka."

At the mentioning of the man's unit, a memory of a conversation Selene had with Shin very early in the day suddenly played in her head.

"Didn't you say your Innie friend joined the airborne?" she asked.

"Did I say that?" Shin vaguely replied. "I don't remember."

Selene was about to say more when Shin bent over and began looking over the body.

"What are you looking for?" Selene couldn't help but ask after a few minutes.

"Jump wings. These paratroopers are all alike: they got to let people know they're paratroopers. It's like, yeah, okay, we get it: you know how to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Good job. It's only so easy a corpse could do it," Shin grunted, before withdrawing his hand. "Huh. No jump wings. Maybe he was a mid-tour replacement?"

He lifted his hand, revealing a single dog tag on a ball chain.

"Well mister paratrooper," Shin declared. "Reveal to me your secrets."

He activated the tags and a holographic image of the corpse, looking very much alive, appeared in mid-air.

 _"Griffin, Job,"_ the hologram said in a slightly accented voice. _"Seven six three five niner dash two one five four seven dash Joker Golf. Blood type: A positive. Religion: none."_

The hologram promptly froze, leaving the image of the former Job Griffin hanging in the air.

"That didn't really tell us much," Selene noted.

Shin glanced at her as he deactivated the tags. "That's the pretty standard information on the Army's tags. What more did you expect?"

"I thought dog tags gave more information than that. Like, I don't know, date of birth, allergies, time of death?"

"Ah. Yeah, they actually do, but I didn't play that information mostly because I already know all of it."

"What? Really?" Selene asked, astonished.

"Yeah," Shin confirmed. "He was probably killed in action what, four, five hours ago based on how stiff his body. Cause of death: some sort of explosive device based on all the shrapnel sticking out of him. Explosion was powerful too, otherwise his clothes wouldn't be all shredded like that."

"The shockwave from an explosion is more than enough to tear a human body to shreds," Shin replied, answering the unvoiced question. "Clothes don't stand a chance against something like that. That's why after a really big explosion, you'll sometimes see corpses that are completely naked."

Selene was impressed. "And you picked all that up just from looking at the body," Selene commented, incredulous.

"Well, yeah. That, and some other clues in the area."

Selene snorted in amusement.

"Okay Sherlock Holmes, now I'm curious. What other clues?" she asked, but Shin shook his head.

"Not Sherlock Holmes," he insisted, and then in a low growl he said, "I'm Batman."

Selene stared at him blankly.

"Batman? You know, the galaxy's greatest detective?"

Selene shrugged.

"Bruce Wayne? The fictional trillionaire? Moonlights as a masked vigilante? Any of this ringing a bell?"

Selene shook her head. Shin sighed

"Never mind. Point is, Griffin here wasn't alone when he died."

"How can you tell?"

"Aside from the fact we found him covered up in a blanket which if he was dead, he wouldn't have been able to do? These dog tags come in pairs. One to stay with the body for identification, one to update the database. Plus, soldiers aren't normally issued _two_ helmets," Shin explained, pointing at a spot just behind Selene.

She turned around and spotted a lump of snow she hadn't noticed earlier. Kicking it slightly knocked most of the snow off, revealing a slight more intact version of the helmet Griffin was currently wearing.

"There was the same amount of snow cover the helmet as there was Griffin here," Shin noted. "Meant both got placed here at the same time."

"Huh," Selene commented. "See, this is why I could never become a detective."

Picking up the helmet, she glanced inside and happened to notice a name written in small letters on the inside.

"'Shen,'" she read out loud before glancing at Shin. "Think you might know him?"

"Doubtful," Shin replied. "First off, the etymology behind the two names are completely different: 'Shin' with an 'i' is Korean, 'Shen' with an 'e' is Chinese or Japanese, can't remember which."

"Besides," he added. "That's a super common last name. That's like asking if you know every 'Riddle' in existence. How many billions and billions of humans exist now?"

"Fair point," Selene admitted. "Sorry, didn't mean to offend."

Shin waved his hand dismissively. "No worries."

"Still, that was a pretty impressive analysis," Selene complimented as Shin climbed to his feet."

"Well, I am a cop," Shin replied with just the barest hint of arrogance, which Selene opted to ignore.

"So am I," she pointed out. "But I couldn't have picked up even a third of the stuff you just did."

Shin shrugged in response.

"Still," Selene began after a few moments of silence. "I just have one question: why is this guy still here?"

"Come again?"

"Clearly there was someone else here at some point. Why didn't they take their friend's body with them?" Selene clarified.

Shin shrugged again. "Could have been for a number of reasons. It's too hard to say without more information."

"That's got to suck," Selene noted. "You sacrifice everything for your people, including your life, only for your body to be left out in the street to be picked apart by scavengers."

"I get what you're saying," Shin replied, "but you got to be pragmatic about things. 'No man left behind' is all good and everything, but not if it's going to cost more lives trying to recover a dead body."

"Plus, being picked apart by scavengers was probably always going to be this guy's fate."

"What makes you say that?"

"His accent." Shin lifted the man's dog tags and gave them a good shook so they jingled. "Places him as having come from Mamore or maybe the Iberian region of Harmony. Either way, both those places are shitholes, full of street rats like him, who join the military if only because that's the only option they have left for them."

Upon hearing that, Selene couldn't help but feel even more sad. She had known a few people whose story had ended up like that.

"But wait," Selene said as a thought occurred to her. "Why didn't the Covenant grab him then? They took everyone else?"

"That, I have even less of a clue," Shin admitted. "Best guess is that he was killed after the Covenant already finished sweeping this area of bodies and they haven't been back yet. Which would be good for us. Other possibility could be Covies already found what they're looking for and don't need the bodies anymore. Either way, makes me really wish I had a hand grenade right now."

Selene took a moment to try and figure out the correlation between the two but eventually she gave up. "Why?"

"So I could prime it and place it under this dude's body. Next person that comes by and disturbs the body is getting a nice hot potato," Shin explained, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Probably won't bag anything important as Grunts are the ones responsible for doing all the bitch work, but a couple dead Grunts is far better than no dead Grunts."

Selene was shocked. "You would desecrate the dead like that?" she exclaimed.

"Uh, yeah? Why the fuck would he care? He's dead. Plus, now his dead ass would at least be somewhat useful."

Selene shook her head. "Exactly, he's dead. Can you just let the dead rest?"

To Selene's immense irritation, Shin actually burst out laughing.

"Can't get any more restful than that," Shin said, casually giving the dead body a good kick, much to Selene's outrage.

"Stop that," she insisted. "Even if you don't care about giving the dead their due respect, surely you can see how it would be a bad idea booby trapping bodies!"

"Yeah? Give me one reason why this would be a bad idea."

"Well..." Selene hesitated as she searched for an answer. "You wouldn't... that would rather indiscriminate. You would have no guarantees that it would be the Covenant picking up the body. It could be other civilians, maybe even some of your fellow soldiers. Heck, we were the first ones to disturb this body! If someone else had booby trapped him, we'd already be dead!"

"Meh, their loss," Shin dismissively said. "It's a moot point at any case because I _don't_ have any grenades on me."

"Thank god for that," Selene muttered under her breath as Shin gathered up the blanket, but instead of laying it back across the body, he offered it to Selene. "What are you giving this to me for?"

"It's a thermal blanket."

"Yeah...? So...?"

"So take it."

"...but that was covering the poor man's body."

"And...? Are you worried about this thing smelling? Because you really don't. It's way too cold out here for the body to have started rotting."

As if to demonstrate, Shin brought the blanket up to his nose and took a deep breath. "There. Smells like ice."

Selene felt like she shouldn't have been surprised by Shin's lack of comprehension, especially given what he had been suggesting to do not even a minute ago but yet, she was. "The blanket was covering this poor man as a sign of respect. We should leave it that way."

Shin sighed, and Selene could tell he was getting impatient.

"Look," he said, gesturing at Griffin. "Do you see this guy moving? At all? Even just to take a breath? You don't because he's dead. You're not. But if you continue to walk around in the damn cold like that, you will be soon. And unless you've got some alternative clothes, _**take the fucking blanket."**_

Selene jumped and reflexively took the blanket, caught off guard by the rather abrupt change in Shin's tone. It was weird, how quickly Shin's mood seem to shift. One moment, he was a giant man-child. The next, a professional soldier. And now? A very pissed off man.

"There," Shin noted as Selene carefully wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. And just like that, Shin was back to normal, giving no hint he'd been all but shouting just a few seconds ago. "Don't you feel better already?"

Selene didn't want to admit it, but she did, actually.

"Good," Shin said as he began stretching. "Come on then. We've already wasted enough time hanging around here. We got to keep moving."

Before Selene could say anything, the sound of gunfire suddenly rang out from nearby -

 _ **FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ!**_

"What was that?" Selene asked, startled.

"Needler fire. That means Covenant. We got to go!" Shin exclaimed, before taking off, with Selene following in his footsteps.

Needler fire continued to ring out as the two of them took off down the street in the complete opposite direction, but Selene's thoughts weren't on the Covenant. Instead, she was focused on the man running in front of her. Despite having been together for many hours at this point, Selene still knew very little about the man they called Joshua Shin. And while that by itself wasn't a problem, his sudden mood swings and casually ruthless nature was enough to make Selene feel a bit wary about him. So, even as she ran, Selene reached down to feel the comforting feeling of her sidearm. If worse came to worse, Selene would not hesitate to use it.

Even if it meant killing the one hope she had to getting out of this city.

* * *

1\. As a reminder, Ambracia is the name of the star in the system (hence the name, the Ambracia System.) This is not a canon system.


	32. Chapter 32

Broman: I'll see what I can do!

Special thanks as always to my editor, **Darkfire7881** for editing this chapter.

Also want to extend my thanks to **TheWildCanuck** **,** who has recently volunteered to act as my second editor. Not only will he be providing a third set of eyes for all chapters coming in the future, he's also volunteered to go back and some of my chapters that have already been uploaded, to make sure they're completely up to speed. So, look forward to that in the next coming weeks!

* * *

 **Chapter 32**

 **Northern Byzas, Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
2435**

 **Adel**

"What the heck was that?"

Adel looked up sharply at X's comment. "What was what?"

"You don't hear that gunfire?"

Adel cocked his head and listened as hard as he could, but he couldn't hear what X was claiming. "No. But my ears aren't as good as yours."

"It's all that flip music; it's not good for your hearing. Ought to listen to classical more often," X distractedly commented. "I think it's coming from in front of us."

"Only the Covenant are in front of us."

"Yeah, _I know_ ," X replied a bit impatiently. "That's why it's weird."

"That's not saying much," Adel replied, though more to himself than anything.

Truth be told, this entire battle had been rather weird. War was really turning out to be completely different from the way Adel had imagined it when he was young. For one thing, the behavior of the Covenant was just simply illogical to him: one moment, they would be attacking with everything they had. Then the next moment, with no warning or apparent reason, they would abruptly stop, leaving in their wake an eerie silence, one where neither side was doing anything. And then, after several long minutes, the fighting would abruptly pick up again as if it never stopped in the first place.

At the moment, this was one such lull. So, in Adel's opinion, anything that happened that didn't involve the Covenant launching another attack, could be considered "weird."

He shrugged to himself.

Grabbing his rifle, he also gave Sam a good kick to the leg. Sam, who had been taking a power nap, instantly came alert.

"What is it?" he asked, grabbing his own rifle.

Adel gestured at X. "X says he's hearing gunfire in front of us."

"Gunfire? You mean plasma fire?"

"No, gunfire," X insisted. "Sounded heavy, like, I don't know, an autocannon of sorts. It's gone now though."

"Huh," Sam commented. "You guys call it in?"

Adel shook his head.

"Right then, I'll do it. Hoplite-3, this is Warhammer 4-3 Charlie, do you copy?"

" _Go ahead 4-3."_

As Sam proceeded to have a whispered conversation over the radio, Adel made sure to keep a wary eye on the line. He wasn't sure why the assault team was this far up, manning this observation post, but damn if Adel wasn't going to make sure no Covie bastards managed to sneak by him and ambush his friends.

"Head's up guys, the LT is coming over," Sam warned them in a low whisper as he lowered his radio. Adel frowned. Great, just what they needed.

"Brass!" someone suddenly called out.

"Dragon!" Sam hissed back.

Adel automatically tensed at the sound of someone running up. To his surprise, Lieutenant Lancelot came bounding out from the darkness, not Silva like Adel was expecting.

Adel let out a sigh of relief. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Sam smirking ever so slightly, and he realized Sam had done that on purpose, but Adel was too relieved to get angry.

"What've we got?" Lancelot asked in the meantime.

"Lance Corporal Xanthus here heard some gunfire in the direction of the Covenant, sir," Sam reported.

"It was something heavy too, like an autocannon or something, sir," X added. "Can't hear anything now, but I swear it was there, sir."

Through his night vision glasses, Adel could see Lancelot frowning.

"Well, it's not impossible," Lancelot said. "According to Command, the 53rd has got an entire company of soldiers running around behind enemy lines right now. But Colonel Menteith is supposed to be operating further inside the city, far from this sector. You sure it was an autocannon Lance Corporal?"

"Yes, sir. It was too heavy to be small arms, too light to be anything bigger. Also, sir, I was hearing… vehicle noises? Like a… tank or something."

"If you heard an autocannon, chances were it was an IFV. But, I can't imagine the Covenant allowing an Armadillo to be driving around behind their lines uncontested. Hmm. Well, I was planning on doing a reconnaissance mission, just to see what the Covenant are up. This is as good of an excuse as any," Lancelot reported. He activated his radio. "Hoplite Actual to Warhammer 1-5: consolidate on my position, break. Actual to Hoplite 3-5, you do the same, over."

A holographic navigation point abruptly appeared over the hole Adel was in, but he ignored it in lieu of maintaining his watch on the line.

"Private."

Adel jumped and whirled around. ", sir?"

"You still got those claymores from earlier this morning?"

"Yes, sir."

"How many are left."

"Two of them, sir."

"Good. Then you're with me. Might end up needing some explosives to cover our retreat depending on how this turns out," Lancelot ordered.

Adel stared at him. "With you… on the reconnaissance patrol?" he dumbly asked.

"Yeah. Is that a problem Marine?" Lancelot asked upon seeing Adel's hesitation. "Because if it is, I could always find someone else."

Adel subtly glanced at X and Sam, both of whom gave no indication of what they were thinking, and while Adel didn't think either of them would think any less of him if he refused to go on this patrol, he knew other people in the platoon would. So, he quickly shook his head.

"No, sir. Not a problem."

"Good. Leave the rockets. Grab your rifle, and make sure you have the explosives."

"Aye, sir," Adel replied.

He looked up as another two people abruptly dropped into their hole. It was Staff Sergeant Reynolds and one of the Army dogfaces, the one that had been acting as Lancelot's platoon sergeant all day. Adel was pretty sure her name was Restrepo.

"Listen up everyone," Lancelot said in a loud whisper. "I'm getting reports of gunfire and vehicle noises originating from somewhere behind the Covenant positions. Don't know what it is, or who it might be. Could be one of our guys, could be a trap. Either way, it needs investigating. I'm going to take a three-man reconnaissance team to do a short-range patrol of the next couple of blocks, take a look around, see if we can't lend some support. Team will consist of myself, Sergeant Restrepo, and this assault Marine, PFC…."

"Savaschi, sir."

"Private Savaschi," Lancelot corrected himself. "Staff Sergeant Reynolds: you're in charge of the line while I'm gone. I want all troops at full alert, on standby to provide covering fire in case we need to come back hot."

", sir, with all due respect, should you be goin' on this patrol?" Reynolds queried. "Yer kind of valuable to the defense of this line. Me'be I should go 'stead."

"No offense Staff Sergeant, but between the two of us, which one of us was the Reconnaissance Marine?" Lancelot drily noted, and Reynolds immediately fell silent. "You'll do fine Staff Sergeant. Just make sure Silva doesn't do anything stupid. Actually, scratch that: make sure he doesn't do anything, period."

"Aye, sir," Reynolds replied, sounding slightly amused.

"Countersigns will remain the same, so keep an ear out for that."

", sir," Sam interjected, "how will we know if you guys are coming in hot?"

Lancelot shrugged. "All the gun and plasma fire will probably be a clue, I'd imagine Corporal," he noted. "Though, I suppose you have a good point… Okay. Our emergency code word will be 'Ethics.' You guys hear that, that means we're coming in hot."

"Understood, sir."

"We'll be on channel one twelve," Lancelot continued. "Call sign: Foxtrot-3. Check-in every seven minutes, depending on circumstances. If everything goes off without a hitch, we should be out there for about an hour or so. If things don't go so well, we'll be back decidedly quicker, if we're back at all."

Adel couldn't help but shiver at that idea, though he tried to stay positive. They were coming back. They had to. Adel had yet to score a single kill.

"In case we don't return or become incapacitated in any way shape or form, my orders are as follows: Staff Sergeant, take command of this section and hold your position until commanded by a higher authority. Sergeant Oyler from 1st Squad will take your place as platoon sergeant and Corporal Mauser will take over for the Army Section. Any questions?"

"No, sir."

Lancelot nodded before glancing at Adel and Restrepo. "Weapons and ammo only; lose everything else. That means no hydration packs, personal effects, rucksacks, etc. We're going light. Lose the pauldrons. Oh, and your helmets."

Adel hastily moved to obey Lancelot's orders. Unbuckling his chin strap, he slid his helmet off and shivered as his nearly bald scalp came in contact with the freezing air. He glanced at Lancelot and Restrepo to see if they both had the same issue, but both of them were wearing some sort of beanie under their helmets.

Adel frowned. He needed something like that.

Slipping off his pauldrons, Adel tucked them in his helmet before handing the entire package off to Sam. Removing all his extra equipment, Adel grabbed his bag of claymores and made sure they were strapped tight against his body, before grabbing his rifle and doing a quick functions check. As he worked, he tried to think of anything else he might need, but nothing came to mind.

"Sergeant Restrepo, do me a favor and jump up and down."

Adel looked up as Restrepo, in the limited space they had, proceeded to jump once. As she did, Adel heard a slight jingling noise coming from her.

"Your dog tags are loose," Lancelot told her, before pulling out a small roll of tape from nowhere and handed it to her. "Tape it down. Private, you next."

Laying his rifle on the ground, Adel scrambled to his feet and gave a small hop. Immediately, he could hear his bag of claymores bouncing against his thigh.

"That's what I thought," Lancelot said with a nod. "Put the claymores on your back, not on your thigh."

"But, sir," Adel protested, "if they're on my back, I can't reach them."

"Don't worry about that," Lancelot assured him. "If we need them, I'll grab them."

Adel nodded in acknowledgement and hastily moved his equipment around. Finally, they were ready.

"Alright Marines, stay frosty," Lancelot ordered. "We'll be right back. You two: just do what I do and we'll be fine. Sergeant Restrepo, wait about five seconds before following."

Without another word, Lancelot climbed out of the hole and disappeared into the darkness. Restrepo waited for a few seconds before quickly following, leaving Adel alone with his team.

"Good luck buddy," Sam quietly said.

"I don't need any luck Corporal: I'm just that badass," Adel replied as confidently as he could.

He could see Sam flipped him off before Adel threw himself out of the hole.

Keeping low in a crouch, Adel immediately ran the fifteen meters to where Lancelot and Restrepo were waiting for him.

"You good Marine?" Lancelot asked as he joined the group.

Adel nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

"Alright then: let's go."

Keeping low, they started to cautiously cross no-man's land towards the Covenant's main line of resistance. As they jogged down the street, Adel did his best to keep the noise to a minimum as he maintained his spacing with the rest of the patrol.

The street was quiet. The wind brought with it the sounds of fighting that was taking place elsewhere in the city, but for the most part, this sector was dead silent aside from the crackling of fires and the sound of Adel's heart beating in his ears. It was dark too. The sun had set a long time ago and all artificial lights had either been destroyed or turned off, but the sky was still glowing ever so slightly. Adel had no idea what the source of the glow was, but he kind of wished it would go away because while it wasn't enough for Adel to actually be able to see where he was going without night optics, it was still enough to cause eerie shadows to be cast all over the place. It actually made Adel really nervous, as he couldn't be sure if the shadows were hiding something.

As Adel ran in the footsteps of the rest of the patrol, the burnt-out hulks of all sorts of vehicles, both civilian and military, loomed out of the darkness, a testament to all the fighting that had been taking place all day. Most of them had been destroyed beyond all recognition, but occasionally, he would run across one that was still partially intact: a Warthog here, a Ghost there, even half a Banshee fighter sticking out from a nearby building a block away. However, it was clear none of them were functioning, plus, none of them looked like they were armed with any sort of autocannon or equipped with any sort of caterpillar tracks. Therefore, none of them could have been the source of the noise of what X claimed he had heard. Which raised the question: what was?

Distracted as Adel was, he almost missed it when Lancelot abruptly raised a closed fist. He only noticed when Restrepo suddenly stopped in front of him, forcing him to step to the side to avoid running into her.

Mutely swearing, Adel quickly cast around to see if anyone noticed his misstep, but neither Restrepo nor Lancelot seemed to be paying attention. Instead, they had both dropped down to one knee and assumed defensive positions, one that Adel hurriedly moved to mirror.

Lifting his rifle, Adel carefully scanned the road, trying to figure out if Lancelot had spotted anything, but before he could start to panic, he heard Lancelot activating his radio.

"Foxtrot-3 to Warhammer, radio check," Lancelot whispered, catching Adel by surprise. Had it only been seven minutes since they left the MLR? It seemed longer than that.

 _"Foxtrot, this is Warhammer: we read you loud and clear, over."_

"Copy," Lancelot replied. "Sitrep is as follows: reconnaissance patrol is crossing the disputed zone now. Nothing to report, over."

" _Understood Foxtrot. Well, we're still here waiting for you, over."_

"Roger, good to know. Hopefully we won't need you. Foxtrot, out."

Lowering his mic, Lancelot gestured for the patrol to gather around him.

"Alright, listen up guys," Lancelot announced in a loud whisper. "Take note of this place: this here is Rally Point. If, for whatever reason, any one of us gets separated, break contact and fall back here. Wait exactly ten minutes for the rest to join you. If no one else does, assume they've been KIA and fall back to the MLR, understood?"

Adel silently bobbed his head. He could only hope that wouldn't happen because there was no way he would want to get left behind for the Covenant to grab him.

"I'm going to set up a claymore to give us cover in case we end up needing to fall back in a hurry," Lancelot continued. "Private, cover the east while I grab one from your back. Sergeant, cover the west."

"Aye, sir."

Adel shifted around so that he was facing the east. Meanwhile, he could feel as Lancelot reached out and began extracting one of the claymores from Adel's back.

", sir," Restrepo suddenly said.

"Yeah?"

"I suppose this isn't the best time to ask this but... well, with all due respect, sir, why am I here?" Restrepo nervously asked. "I'm mean, I'm not an infantryman or a cav scout, so... what exactly am I doing here?"

Adel glanced over his shoulder in her direction.

"You're not?" he asked before Lancelot could reply. "Then what are you?"

"I'm a nineteen lima: a Grizzly crewman," she replied. Adel couldn't help but let out a soft scoff.

"God damn," he swore, "you're a fucking DAT?"

"A what?"

"A dumbass tanker," Lancelot interjected. "And the reason why you're here Sergeant is _because_ you are a tanker: whatever is in front of us was some sort of tracked vehicle which, _as_ a tanker, you'd be more familiar with than me or the Private here. Plus, if it's tracked, it was probably attached to the 53rd at some point, which means you'd have a better chance at identifying who they are than we would."

Adel took a moment to think over all that, then decided that made some sense. Still, the fact they had a DAT in the patrol made Adel nervous; he didn't like the idea of a fucking POG watching his back. But, it wasn't his call.

There was a mute _click_ from behind him as Lancelot removed the safety pin from the claymore, arming it.

"We're all set here," Lancelot declared. "Let's move it out. Private Savaschi, cover our six."

"Aye aye, sir."

Adel waited for Lancelot and Restrepo to depart before moving to follow. Before leaving though, he took a glance in the direction the MLR was. Adel knew he wasn't too far away, and that it was currently being manned by dozens and dozens of Marines huddled behind their weapons, ready to unleash hell at a moment's notice. Yet, even from this distance, Adel couldn't see any of that, only darkness.

Adel shivered. He never thought he would ever be this close to so many people, yet at the same time, be so far away.

Throwing one last glance at the MLR, Adel took off after the rest of the patrol.

They jogged down the rest of the street in silence. It wasn't until they reached the end of the block that Lancelot abruptly raised his fist once more, though this time he didn't gesture for the patrol to join him. Instead, once he had everyone's attention, he very clearly pointed two fingers at his eyes, then pointed straight at the ground in front of him.

At first, Adel had no idea what he was supposed to be looking at. But after just a few seconds, it quickly became clear.

It had been snowing on and off all day. While the sheer heat from all the fighting had caused much of it to melt, enough had made it to the ground to cover it in a fine layer. However, spread out on the ground in front of them were a number of small mounds of snow. Each one was circular in shape, almost identical in size, and they were all spread out in a randomized pattern. It was clear, even to Adel, what they were: land mines.

They had reached the outer perimeter of the Covenant's MLR.

 _"Alright guys,"_ Adel heard Lancelot say over the local channels on the radio. _"Looks like we got a minefield in front of us. Hold back: I'm going to check it out."_

Adel absentmindedly nodded as he backtracked a few steps and took a knee. He watched as Lancelot pulled out his bayonet and began digging up the area around the mine. Very carefully, Lancelot dug away all of the snow, revealing the outer housing of the mine itself. Adel watched with bated breath as Lancelot began closely studying the mine, looking it over and making some notes. It wasn't long before Lancelot was carefully covering the explosive back up and running back towards Adel and Restrepo.

"Well, it looks like we've got a mixture of AP and AT mines," Lancelot breathlessly reported. "Good news is, they all seem to be dumb mines with pressure triggers; as long as we don't step on them, we'll be able to cut right through this field. I'll lead the way: just make sure you guys step exactly where I step."

"Yes, sir," Adel murmured along with Restrepo.

Climbing to his feet, Adel watched as Lancelot took a deep breath, before he cautiously began walking out into the minefield, making sure to take short strides that would be easy for the rest of the patrol to follow, while at the same time, stepping somewhat heavily into the ground to make sure he was leaving a clear imprint in the snow. Once he was a couple of meters into the field, he turned around and gestured for the rest of the patrol to follow him.

Adel waited a few seconds after Restrepo started to cut through the field before following. His initial goal had been to keep his head up so that he could continue scanning the area for Covenant soldiers, but two steps into the field and it quickly became clear that was impossible as Adel really needed to see where he was going lest he walk over a mine. He could only hope no Covenant patrols would show up while he was cutting across the field.

Adel carefully stepped from one footstep into the next. It was surprisingly hard and required an especially large amount of concentration for Adel to avoid losing his balance. It was strange how Adel could be walking on solid open ground, yet feel like he was trying to walk across a tight rope.

But, the good thing about the snow was that not only was Lancelot's path clearly marked, the snow also marked the positions of each mine, allowing Adel to see how much wiggle room he had in terms of putting his foot down. Obviously, for the Covenant, this wasn't a good thing and Adel couldn't help but wonder how they missed this obvious flaw, but he decided he didn't care as it made this infiltration much easier for him.

After several very long minutes the mines abruptly ended, and he looked up to see he was officially out of the field. Looking back, he was startled to see just how big the field actually was: from the spot they had started to the spot they had finished, the field was about ten meters in width. Given the size and density of the field, Adel felt there was no way the Covenant had planted all those mines by hand, as someone would have noticed them doing so, and thus concluded the mines must have been airdropped into position. That would also explain why they were so poorly concealed.

"You guys good?" Lancelot whispered as Adel rejoined the rest of the patrol.

"Good here, sir," Restrepo immediately replied.

In lieu of a vocal response, Adel lifted his right thumb.

"Good. Foxtrot-3 to Warhammer: radio check, over."

 _"Foxtrot, Warhammer: we're still reading you loud and clear, over."_

"Copy. Warhammer, sitrep is as follows: Foxtrot-3 has successfully infiltrated Covenant defenses and are proceeding with recce. Will be going radio silent for the next thirty mikes, over."

 _"Understood Foxtrot. Radio silent for thirty mikes. We'll be on standby waiting for your call, over."_

"Affirmative. Foxtrot-3, out."

Lancelot lowered his mic and glanced at his waiting troops. "Eyes and ears open from this point on, ladies and gentlemen. We're in bad guy country now, so try and remember everything you see or hear. Never know if it might come in handy later. We'll go into this building over here, see if we can't get a good view of the entire Covenant line."

Adel silently nodded, though at this point he was kind of wishing he had kept his helmet. All modern battle helmets now came with a built-in headcam which would record everything the wearer was seeing, something that could prove extremely useful in a post-analysis of a recon patrol. But then again, Adel had found that helmets always made a bunch of noise, so perhaps the risk wasn't worth it.

Lancelot led the way towards the nearest building. The doors had been blown apart at some point, leaving the entrance clear; nevertheless, Lancelot gestured for the patrol to wait by the door before proceeding into the lobby by himself. Adel watched as Lancelot cautiously entered the building, with him carefully sweeping the entire lobby, including the ceiling, looking for possible traps or tripwires or other methods of detection. He must not have found any as, moments later, he gestured for the rest of the patrol to come in.

Adel climbed to his feet and slowly entered the building, glad to be sort of out of the cold, even if it was for just a few moments.

The crunching of glass under the soles of his boots greeted him as he looked around. He didn't recognize this building, but it had clearly been part of the UNSC's MLR at one point as the floor was littered with all sorts of brass casings, metal machine gun links, and frozen splatters of blood. Plasma scoring covered just about every surface of the room, and firing holes had been constructed in the walls. As a result, the room was a mess.

Catching Lancelot's eye, Adel glanced at the staircase he was gesturing at and nodded. Stepping over an empty can of biofoam lying on the floor, Adel pointed his rifle at the top of the stairs and waited as Lancelot and Restrepo walked past him before following.

Despite Adel's best efforts, the metal staircase made a hollow _thunk_ noise every time his heavy boots touched a step, the noise sounding far too loud in the dead silence. Fortunately, no one seemed to notice as the patrol ascended nearly four flights of stairs before Lancelot decided they were high enough. Exiting the stairwell, they cut across the floor before reaching a balcony that had no safety rail, thus allowing them unimpeded sightlines of the Covenant positions below.

"Sergeant, cover our six," Lancelot commanded as they huddled together. "Private, with me. Stay low, we'll high crawl to the edge of the balcony and start noting Covie positions."

Without waiting for a response, Lancelot dropped to the ground and started to crawl away. Adel threw a quick glance at Restrepo before shrugging to himself. Tucking his rifle into the crook of his elbow, he dropped down to his hands and knees and quickly scrambled to join Lancelot at the edge of the balcony.

"Alright," he heard Lancelot whisper. "Let's see what we can see, shall we?"

Adel glanced over at Lancelot in time to see him pulling out a pair of miniature binoculars and begin scanning the ground below. Adel didn't have binoculars, but he did have a scope on his rifle so, unfurling his rifle from his arms, he activated the night vision setting and brought his rifle up to his eye line.

At first, he didn't see anything. After a moment though, his eyes gradually adjusted, and he realized where he was.

The building overlooked a large opening that gave Adel excellent sightlines of all of the Covenant positions. To his far right was the Covenant's main line of resistance. There wasn't much to see as, much like the UNSC, the Covenant had dug a number of foxholes into the ground, such that most of their defensive line was hidden from view. Adel did spot what looked to be one or two Jackals running around, but without their arm shields activated, it was hard to track them.

However, what Adel was really interested in was the open area directly in front of him. Set some forty to fifty meters behind the MLR was what appeared to be some sort of Covenant forward operating base. At the moment, it didn't look like much: set inside a small civilian building that appeared to have been some sort of general store in its past life, the only thing that identified it as a Covie base was all the alien-looking tech sticking out from the roof, as well as all the Covenant soldiers walking in and out of the building. However, Adel could also see that it was quickly changing. A number of Grunts, supervised by a handful of Elites, were running around, reinforcing the building with portable energy shield generators and triptych barriers. Other Grunts were busy installing mounted defenses like plasma cannons, fuel rods, and auto-turrets, making sure they were well protected behind several barricades, as well as ensuring they had proper interlocking fields of fire.

"Bingo," Adel heard Lancelot whisper. "Now _this_ was worth coming for."

Adel nodded, more to himself than anything. Sweeping the face of the building with his rifle, he started counting.

", sir, I count four separate plasma cannon emplacements," Adel noted. "And two fuel rod cannons."

"Yeah. Looks like we also got snipers in the back buildings too," Lancelot observed.

Adel started, and slowly panned his rifle to the left. Maybe another twenty meters behind the Covie occupied building, there were a series of apartment complexes. With the face of the buildings covered in shattered windows, it took Adel a long time before he spotted any of the snipers. But he finally spotted some movement on the roof of one of the buildings and focusing on it, he could see a pair of Jackal snipers wandering around in the snow.

"Lots of firepower down there too," Lancelot noted, and Adel glanced in his direction and noticed him staring at the base of the apartment buildings.

Pointing his rifle in the same direction, Adel spotted a handful of Covenant vehicles, all covered in some sort of camouflage netting, sitting there idly. By his count, there were half a dozen Ghost vehicles, two assault Wraiths, and maybe four Shadow APCs.

"Gonna need a lot of support if we are to try and break through all that," Adel commented.

"Yeah. Snipers should be relatively easy to take out: hit them with the one five fives, maybe one of the MLRS'," Lancelot reported. "That FOB though is going to be the issue, especially once they get those shields online. It will probably take a couple of JDAMs just to crack that shit open. Wonder what sort of air support we can get our hands on. Savaschi, you guys got a JTAC with you, right?"

"Yes, sir. Sergeant Bendis, sir."

"I'll need to talk to him once we get back, see what sort of air support we can get out hands on. Rather avoid talking to the Air Force if I can avoid it."

By the sounds of it, Lancelot was talking to himself so Adel opted not to respond. Instead, he continued sweeping the area below him, trying to spot other things of interest.

"Restrepo, get up here," Adel heard Lancelot suddenly order. He heard soft footsteps coming from behind before Restrepo appeared, throwing herself onto the ground between them.

", sir?" she said.

"You see anything down there that could look like a UNSC tracked vehicle or at least something that's equipped with an autocannon?" Lancelot asked as he handed his binos over to her.

As Restrepo started searching the area below, Adel did the same with his rifle. Unlike no man's land, there weren't too many destroyed vehicles around, probably because the Covenant had moved them, so it didn't take long for Adel to confirm for himself there weren't any tracked vehicles, or vehicles armed with any sort of heavy ordnance. He did, however, notice something else...

"I'm not seeing anything that matches that description, sir," Restrepo was saying.

"Yeah, me neither," Lancelot replied. "Which makes me wonder what the hell was making that noise earlier?"

", sir," Adel quickly interjected, "is it just me, or do the number of Covenant not really match up with the amount that have been attacking us all day? I mean, I know we've been killing a lot of them, but they seem rather... depleted."

He could see Restrepo doing a quick double-take, but Lancelot merely nodded.

"You raise a good point Private, but could be they're all just in the building over there. Wish we could get eyes inside some -"

 _Boom._

Adel's head snapped up at the sound of an explosion in the distance.

"What the hell was that?" he exclaimed.

"Was that an explosion?" Restrepo asked. "Sounded like it came from even further behind enemy lines than we are."

"It was a TR/9 trip mine," Lancelot calmly replied and Adel snapped his head in Lancelot's direction.

"You can tell what things are simply by the sound of their explosion, sir?" he couldn't help but blurt out.

Lancelot snorted. "No. I can, however, when I get a message on my TACPAD telling me what it was."

He lifted his TACPAD to show them and in the dim light, Adel could just barely see the screen.

"One of my Sappers planted a couple of mines earlier this morning," Lancelot explained. "Their status was all synced up with my TACPAD. But those were planted near our initial strongpoint, the one we were holding before you Marines arrived. That was hours ago. What caused them to go off now?"

"Well, whatever it was, sir, it's clearly gotten the Covenant in a tizz," Restrepo pointed out and Adel quickly raised his rifle.

Sure enough, the entire Covenant base had come alive with activity. Covenant soldiers were pouring out of their FOB while Elite commanders were running around screaming orders. It was clear the Covenant were mobilizing, but to Adel's surprise, they weren't headed for the UNSC MLR, but further behind their own.

"They're definitely heading for their rear," Restrepo pointed out as Covenant soldiers began piling into the majority of the Ghost and both the Shadows before the entire convoy started heading in the direction the explosion had originated from. "What the hell is back there, sir?"

Lancelot slowly shook his head. "I have no idea but whatever it is, it's clearly one of ours; no idea why the Covenant would be freaking out otherwise. Both of you: back up. I'm going to call in an artillery strike, see if we can't- "

 _CLATTER._

Adel reflexively jerked his head up and turned around at the sound of a piece of metal rolling across the floor behind him. To his absolute horror, a single Covenant Grunt Minor was hurriedly walking right by the room they were in. What the Grunt was doing in this building, Adel had no idea, but clearly, the Grunt wasn't expecting to see them as the creature let out a loud cry of alarm and began to draw its plasma pistol.

Adel hurriedly turned around to bring his rifle to bear, but Lancelot was faster. With a speed that caught Adel by surprise, Lancelot scrambled up to his feet and launched himself at the Grunt.

Reaching the Grunt just as the alien was bringing its pistol to bear, Lancelot lashed out with his right hand, knocking the plasma pistol clean out of the little creature's hands. Before the astonished Grunt could react, Lancelot delivered an upper elbow strike with his left arm, hitting the Grunt hard in the face and causing the alien to stumble backwards. Before the Grunt could get far though, Lancelot grabbed the alien by the arm, did a sort of half-turn, and proceeded to flip the Grunt right over his shoulder and onto the floor.

The Grunt landed with a loud _thump_ , and Adel automatically raised his rifle to shoot it, but before he could pull the trigger, Restrepo grabbed the upper receiver.

"No!" she hissed. "Gunfire will compromise our position!"

Adel swore as he realized she was right and hurriedly flicked the safety on to prevent any chance of a negligent discharge.

In the meantime, Lancelot had pulled out a wicked-looking knife from his belt and raised it above his head, but just as he stabbed down, the Grunt recovered from its stunned state and quickly rolled out of the way. Lancelot's knife embedded itself into the floorboards, where the Grunt promptly kicked it out of Lancelot's hands and into the far corner of the room while at the same time, pulling out a knife of its own. But before the small creature could do much more than look menacing, Lancelot planted both his hands on the ground and lifted himself high enough for him to smash the soles of both his feet hard against the Grunt's chest.

The blow sent the Grunt stumbling backwards, and both Adel and Restrepo reflexively moved to get out of the way but Adel immediately realized that was a mistake as the Grunt stumbled all the way to the edge of the balcony -

\- and toppled straight over the edge.

"AIEEEEEEEEE!" the Grunt screamed at the top of its lungs before the scream was abruptly cut off by a loud, metallic _**thump**_ , one that audible even five stories high.

Lancelot proceeded to sum up the situation in one succinct word: "Shit."

"Maybe the Covies won't notice, sir?" Adel hopefully suggested.

 _ **EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!**_

The inhuman screech of an alarm _immediately_ put that hope to bed and if that wasn't enough, Adel could hear the clunking of what sounded like lights being turned on before the room they were standing in was instantly flooded with bright light. Adel's night vision goggles immediately switched off, but it wasn't fast enough, and Adel let out a loud grunt of pain as he was blinded by the light. He found himself stumbling as he tried to clear the white spots from his vision.

"Marine, GET DOWN!"

Adel felt himself getting tackled and as he fell, something hot passed mere centimeters by his bare head and as he hit the ground, the retort of a beam rifle filled his ears.

 _ **FWOOZ!**_

"CONTACT!" Restrepo screamed. "I can't see where it's coming from!"

"Hit the deck!" Lancelot screamed back. "It's those fucking Jackal snipers in the other buildings! Hit the deck and crawl for the door! Fall back, fall back!"

Adel flinched as another two plasma beams speared through the room and he hastily scrambled for the door, trying to get out of the kill zone as soon as possible.

Reaching the doorframe, Adel rolled out of the room into the hall and scrambled to his feet, only to stumble once more as two plasma bolts punched through the drywall right by his head.

"MOVE MOVE MOVE!" Lancelot screamed, grabbing Adel and hauling him to his feet. "We got to get out of here before we get boxed in!"

Nearly falling down the entire stairwell, Adel ran after Restrepo and Lancelot as more and more alarms began sounding. Hitting the ground floor, they burst outside.

"Ah, FUCK!" Adel screamed as he was blinded by the spotlight once more. In pain, he lifted his rifle and began firing in the direction the light was coming from, trying to hit it.

"Keep moving, KEEP MOVING!" Lancelot hollered.

"INCOMING!" Restrepo screamed.

 _ **SWOOOSHHH!**_

A fuel rod cannon went streaking by overhead, exploding somewhere behind them. Adel immediately hit the deck.

"Lieutenant! We got incoming, rear!" Adel yelled in warning as he spotted the Covenant soldiers maneuvering towards them from behind. He raised his rifle and fired at them, causing them to scatter. Immediately, he began taking plasma fire.

 _ **FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ!**_

"We got to move otherwise we're going to get pinned down!" Lancelot warned. "Savaschi! Set up that claymore and give us some cover! I'm going to pop smoke! Restrepo, covering fire!"

"On it, sir!"

Restrepo's rifle roared to life as Adel tore his bag off his back. Ripping out the claymore, he hastily planted it on the ground and activated the motion sensor, so that it would explode the moment the first Covenant ran by. As soon as he armed the device, he gestured wildly at Lancelot.

"LT, WE'RE SET!"

"Smoke out!" Lancelot immediately yelled, hurtling two devices in the direction of the Covenant.

As the smoke cloud began to form, Adel pointed his rifle at the spotlights and began unloading on them, trying to take them out before the smoke got too thick for him to see. Adel pulled the trigger as fast as he could, and just as he felt the bolt on his rifle lock back, there was a flash and the blinding light abruptly disappeared. A moment later, the smoke cloud rolled in, obscuring the humans from view.

"Fall back, NOW!" Lancelot instantly roared and, grinning to himself, Adel whirled around and ran for no man's land.

Despite not being able to see much, the Covenant emplacements continued to unload into the smoke, forcing Adel to keep his head down as he ran, lest he lose it.

"Come on, we got to keep moving!" Lancelot was urging. "We got to get the fuck out of the Covies pre-registered kill zone!"

Plasma continued to fly past overhead as, despite the smoke cloud, the Covenant gunners continued to pour fire downrange. However, as if that wasn't enough –

 _ **SWOOSH SWOOSH!**_

"INCOMING!" Adel screamed as he heard the plasma mortars come screaming in. He hit the ground once more.

 _ **KABOOM KABOOM!**_

The mortars exploded nearby, sending waves of heat rolling in all directions.

"Holy shit!" Adel yelped as he shook the excess dirt off his head that had landed on him as a result of the explosions. "What the fuck did we do to piss these guys off!?"

Someone suddenly grabbed him and yanked him to his feet.

"Keep moving Marine!" Lancelot yelled at him.

"But we've got incoming!" Adel protested even as the sound of more mortars coming in filled the air.

"They're just going to keep saturating this field with plasma until they get us! We have got to get the fuck out of here!"

 _ **SWOOSHHH… KABOOM!**_

Adel was knocked off his feet as the closest plasma mortar so far exploded, sending shrapnel whizzing right by Adel's head, though he hardly noticed as he was gripping his ears in pain. Without his helmet, Adel didn't have any earplugs in and while adrenaline had allowed him to power through all the gun and plasma fire, the explosions had been too powerful from him to ignore. As the ringing started to fade from his ears though, he could hear someone screaming in pain.

"Patrol, sound off!" Lancelot roared, sounding very far away. "Lancelot is green!"

"Savaschi! I'm okay!" Adel yelled back as he quickly checked himself over for injuries and finding none.

"Sergeant Restrepo! Status!"

A very pain-filled voice sounded over Adel's radio. _"I'm hit! I'm down!"_

"Shit!"

Dashing back into the smoke, Adel nearly tripped over Restrepo as she laid on the ground, gripping her upper thigh. Her rifle laid nearby, neatly cut in two, but more alarmingly was the blood that was leaking out from between her fingers.

"Oh shit!" Adel yelled as he reflexively reached for his IFAK to grab a can of biofoam, but Lancelot immediately shoved him aside.

"You're out in the open for fuck's sake!" he screamed as he grabbed a hold of Restrepo and hurriedly dragged her to a nearby crater.

Realizing how stupid he was being, Adel hastily dove into the hole behind them.

 _ **SWOOSH... KABOOM!**_

Drops of plasma splattered against the edge of the crater. Hastily reloading, Adel snapped his rifle up and randomly fired in the direction of the Covenant. Behind him, he could hear Restrepo groaning in pain.

"Sorry, sir, fucked up," she was saying.

"Forget about it! We got to get you out of here! This is going to hurt."

Restrepo abruptly screamed; startled, Adel looked back to see Lancelot had removed the sling from Restrepo's rifle, wrapped it around her thigh, and tightened it like it was a tourniquet.

"That'll hold long enough for us to get back to the MLR!" Lancelot yelled over the sound of the plasma fire. "Private! Grab the Sergeant and fall back! Skip past the rally point and head straight for the line! I'll cover!"

", sir, I -"

 _ **FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ!**_

Both Adel and Lancelot ducked as plasma fire chewed up the edge of the crater.

"NOW Marine! That's a fucking order!"

Slinging his rifle onto his back, Adel grabbed Restrepo and lifted her up in a fireman's carry, ignoring the yell of pain as the motion jostled her wounded leg.

"Get ready!" Lancelot hurtled another smoke grenade downrange. "Covering! Go go GO!"

He began firing his rifle in the direction of the Covenant as Adel surged to his feet and began retreating. Plasma splattered on the ground next to him, mortars and fuel rods were passing by overhead, it was almost overwhelming! For the most part though, Adel did his best to ignore it as he concentrated on running as fast as he could.

Making it to the edge of the minefield, Adel hesitated and glanced back in the direction of the smoke. Lancelot was still out there, and Adel wasn't sure if he should wait.

"What are you doing!?" Restrepo demanded to know.

"The LT's still out there!"

"He'll be fine! Let's go dude!"

"But - !

Restrepo grabbed him by his shirt.

"Listen!" she yelled into his ear as best as she could from his shoulders. "Every centimeter of this area has been pre-sighted for machine guns and artillery! We stay here, we're fucked! Let's go!"

Adel opened his mouth to protest but before he could a word out, he heard the sound of another incoming mortar. "INCOMING!"

Dropping Restrepo on the ground, Adel hurtled himself on the ground and curled up into a small ball.

 _ **KABOOM... BOOMBOOMBOOM!**_

The mortar landed directly in the minefield. The ensuing explosion caused a sympathetic detonation amongst some of the mines there and as Adel looked up, he saw a small path had been cleared in the field.

"Come on Private! We have to leave, right now!" Restrepo screamed at him.

Realizing she was right, Adel grabbed Restrepo and started running. Skipping through the minefield and somehow managing to avoid every single mine, he hurtled past the rally point and ran directly towards the UNSC front lines.

"BRASS BRASS BRASS!" Adel screamed at the top of his lung as he approached.

"ADEL! OVER HERE!"

Adel looked up to see Sam and X waving from a hole just to his left and, angling himself in the direction, Adel dashed towards them.

Sliding into the hole, he felt Restrepo slipping off his shoulders, but Sam and X quickly grabbed her before she could hit the ground.

"What's goin' on!? What's your status!?"

Adel looked up to see Reynolds in the hole with them.

"We got compromised, Staff Sergeant!" Adel breathlessly yelled. He pointed at the groaning Restrepo. "Sergeant Restrepo got hit!"

Reynolds took one look at the wound and swore.

"Go shi! CORPSMAN! COMPTON!"

Compton immediately came running up.

"Where's she hit?" he demanded to know.

"Upper right thigh!"

"Give me some light!"

Sam hastily pulled out a flashlight and switched on. Red light filled the hole and Adel watched as Compton checked Restrepo out. He shook his head.

"Okay, let's get her out of here!" he yelled. "Lance Corporal, help me out here! Grab her legs!"

X leapt to his feet and together, he and Compton scurried away with Restrepo in tow.

In the meantime, Reynolds had grabbed a hold of Adel.

"Savaschi, where's the Skipper?" he demanded.

"I don't know Staff Sergeant," Adel admitted. "He stayed behind to give us some cover."

"Gorram it!" Reynolds swore. "STAY ALERT Y'ALL!"

To Sam and X, he said, "Stay here. I'll be back."

And, without another word, he darted out of the hole and disappeared into the darkness.

With most of the priority stuff out of the way, Adel sat down and took a deep breath. He found himself trembling, and he wasn't too sure why. Clenching his fist, he tried to stop but it didn't help that much.

"Adel."

Adel looked up.

"You alright?" Sam asked.

"Yeah. Yeah! I'm good dude," Adel tried to assure him but found he couldn't hide the tremor in his voice. Fortunately, Sam didn't press the issue.

"You see what the hell was making all that noise X claimed he heard?" Sam asked instead as he glanced out into no man's land.

"No. But there was definitely something out there, it was just further behind the Covies' lines."

"'Further behind Covie lines?'" Sam repeated, incredulous. "How the hell did X hear that shit then?"

"Dunno. Maybe X is a freak of nature," Adel replied, staring at his hand. Yeah, tremor was definitely not going away.

Before Sam could say anything else though, there was a mute explosion from somewhere in no man's land and Adel hastily grabbed his helmet and rifle. Were the Covenant about to attack?

"ETHICS!"

Adel damn near pulled the trigger and it was only at the last second he remembered that had been an alternative challenge word Lancelot had set up before they had left on their patrol.

Lowering his rifle, he watched as Lancelot emerge from the darkness, looking no worse for wear.

"LT! OVER HERE!" Sam yelled and Lancelot hurriedly dashed in their direction.

Tossing his rifle to the side, Adel reached out and helped Lancelot into the hole as Sam tapped his radio and reported, "Staff Sergeant, the Skipper's back."

", sir, any more pursuers?" Adel asked, staring out into the darkness as if an entire horde of Covies soldier would suddenly emerge.

"Negative," Lancelot breathlessly replied. "That second claymore seems to have scared them off. Status on Sergeant Restrepo?"

"Corpsman is with her now, sir. He's bringing her back to the aid station as we speak," Adel reported as Reynolds returned.

", sir," Reynolds began. "What's the situation?"

"There's definitely friendlies out there," Lancelot confirmed. "But who, what, or where, I couldn't tell you. Whoever it is has gotten the Covies all fired up and freaking the fuck out, so we got to try and support them."

Whipping out a piece of paper, Lancelot quickly scribbled down something and handed it off to Reynolds.

"Get a hold of Battalion and start rocking that sector with the eighty-one mils," he demanded. "And get me some arty support if you can! I'm headed over to the heavy machine gun section to get some indirect going: send your JTAC over as soon as you can!"

"Aye, sir! Bendis, this is Reynolds: Skipper wants to see you!"

"Keep alert Marines," Lancelot ordered. "This is probably going to stir the hornets' nest. Watch for infiltrators!"

Without another word, Lancelot and Reynolds dashed off, leaving Sam and Adel alone.

"Holy shit dude," Sam muttered.

Adel didn't reply, as he was still trying to figure out how to stop himself from trembling. All of a sudden, he found himself craving a cigarette, which was weird as Adel wasn't much of a smoker, but he couldn't figure out how to calm down otherwise. Unfortunately, none of his teammates were smokers either, but Adel knew X kept a pack of cigarettes in his rucksack for the sole purpose of bartering.

Ignoring the concerned look Sam was throwing his way, Adel grabbed X's bag and started digging through it, tossing shit aside until he found the pack.

With trembling hands, Adel managed to extract a cigarette, but just as he was about to light it, Sam stopped him.

"Sorry dude," he said apologetically. "But you know we can't have a fire here: it'll light up our entire position. Best I can do is give you some Copenhagen."

Wordlessly, Adel tossed the cigarette away and grabbed the can Sam offered him. Grabbing a pinch, he shoved it into his mouth and waited for the nicotine to kick in.

"You sure you're okay Adel?" he heard Sam ask, and Adel bobbed his head but there was no denying it: he just couldn't stop trembling.

He sat there, doing his best to calm down, as the sound of fighting coming from directly in front of them filled the air.


	33. Chapter 33

Many thanks to both **Darkfire7881** and **TheWildCanuck** for taking the time out of their very busy schedules and editing this chapter for me! Without them, I don't think this chapter would be half as good as it is! Thanks guys!

* * *

 **Chapter 33**

 **Covenant designated Landing Zone: Deliverance  
Forerunner Designated World: MS 222-53 a  
9th Age of Reclamation  
9th Cycle of the Planet's Rotation  
**

 **Zek**

"File, CEASE FIRE!"

Zek poked his head out from behind the wall he had taken cover behind. The human armored vehicle that had been firing on them had finally stopped, and was now sitting motionless on the road. A multitude of holes had been blasted into the vehicle's armor, leaving it torn up and smoking, but even then, Zek couldn't be sure if the gunner inside had been killed or not. If it had been just a human inside, then the area was safe. If it had been the Demon however... well, Zek had seen firsthand just how hard Demons were to kill.

"Kig-Yar, inspect that vehicle!" a nearby Sangheili roared.

It took Zek a few moments to realize the Sangheili's orders were directed at him, but once he did, Zek hurriedly sprang into action. Lifting his needle rifle, Zek cautiously approached the human vehicle and took a deep breath, before glancing inside. He half expected to instantly get shot, but fortunately, all he saw was a dead human sitting in one of the seats. Red blood was dripping from several holes in the human's chest, causing a pool to form underneath it. The human must have been one of the prisoners from Firebase Reformation, as the human was lacking armor and weapons aside from a Sangheili issued Type-25 plasma rifle, but whether or not this human had been the one to assassinate the Minister, Zek honestly couldn't tell.

Even though the human was very clearly dead, Zek nevertheless lifted his rifle and shot the human once more in the head, just for good measure. At this point in the day and after everything Zek had been through so far, he was no longer willing to take any more chances if he could avoid it.

The human's head snapped to the side but aside from that, the alien didn't move at all. Satisfied the creature was _actually_ dead, Zek hurriedly left the vehicle.

"Vehicle is safe sire!" Zek reported.

"Is the Demon inside!?" the same Sangheili from before demanded to know.

"No sire!" Zek yelled back.

The Sangheili snarled. "Damnations! The Demon is escaping! File, advance!"

The entire file of Covenant warriors surged forward down the street in the direction the humans and the Demons had gone. Their path was easy enough to follow, as their footprints were still very fresh in the snow, though where they thought they would be going, Zek had no idea. His only thought was that if he valued his head, he would do his best to stop them.

As he hopped out of the human vehicle, Zek reflexively looked around for Rezan, only to remember Rezan was still at the firebase, getting his hand fixed. Zek mentally wished him the best, and prayed he would be able to see Rezan one more time before Rezan was evacuated off this planet; for now, Zek had to focus on the task at hand.

"Forward! Forward!" the Sangheili were roaring as they shoved all the warriors ahead of them. "Advance!"

Zek hastily dashed forward to avoid getting struck by the Sangheili, though he did so with a fair amount of reluctance. He didn't like this idea of charging blindly forward in the wake of the Demon's path without knowing what was ahead of them. After all, the Demons had proved time after time they were unafraid of being pursued, and would often times turn around and set up an ambush for their pursuers.

However, there was no chance of slowing things down. The Shipmaster was furious and demanding retribution for the death of the Minister and as a simple foot soldier, Zek was expected to deliver. So he ran alongside everyone else, praying whenever he rounded a corner that it would not be him that was killed.

 _ **CRACK!**_

The Unggoy directly in front of him suddenly collapsed, screaming in pain as he was struck by gunfire. Zek immediately dove to the side as more bullets tore up the street around him.

Vittu! Zek knew this was going to happen!

"INTERACTION!" Zek heard a Sangheili cry out as he scrambled back to safety around the corner of the wall. "HERETICS! ON THE HIGH!"

Cautiously poking his head around the corner, Zek spotted muzzle flashes coming from the human structure built for their ground-confined vehicles. Leveling his rifle, Zek experimentally fired a few shots in the direction most of the gunfire was coming from, but the angle was all wrong and all his blamite rounds did was shatter against the concrete.

Zek swore. He needed some height.

As he backed up around the corner to reload, a nearby Unggoy shoved past him and swung out around the corner to try and shoot back. Unsurprisingly, the Unggoy immediately collapsed, a smoking wound in his abdomen. However, what did surprise Zek was the fact the Unggoy had been hit by plasma, not the expected gunfire.

Zek felt a thrill of excitement at the sight. Surely it was the Demon that was firing the captured plasma rifle.

Poking his head around the corner once more even as another Unggoy dashed out to try and rescue his screaming friend, Zek desperately tried to spot where the plasma fire was coming from; even as he did his best to avoid getting struck by gunfire. He need not have worried though, as another file of Covenant warriors had appeared from a different direction, and had drawn the gunfire to them. As for the Demon's position, Zek had very little luck until -

 _ **FWOOZ!**_

"AIEEE!"

The Unggoy that had tried to rescue his friend abruptly let out a loud scream as he too was struck by more plasma fire. The two Unggoy laid there in the street, screaming pitifully, but Zek ignored them as he focused on where the plasma bolt had originated from. It appeared to have come from the floor directly below the one with all the gunfire and while it was a little hard to see because of the shadows, Zek could just barely spot the silhouette of a humanoid figure moving about. Whether or not it was the Demon, Zek couldn't tell from where he was, but it was a good starting point.

Ducking back into safety, Zek spotted Evocatus 'Quetshadee charging down the street, leading yet another file of Covenant warriors, and waved him down.

"Sire! I think I spotted the Demon!" Zek yelled.

"Where?" the 'Quetshadee demanded to know.

"I believe the Demon is on the fifth floor sire!" Zek shouted, pointing around the corner. It's firing a captured Type-25 plasma rifle!"

"Show me!"

Zek didn't bother arguing. Rounding the corner, he started firing his rifle in the direction he had seen the muzzle flashes, hoping 'Quetshadee was paying attention.

 _ **FWOOZ!**_

The Demon returned fire, and Zek hastily ducked, but fortunately the plasma hadn't been directed at him. Instead, it had been fired at a nearby Unggoy trying to cross the street. The bolt smashed against the Unggoy's belt where he was storing his Type-1 grenades, setting them off.

"Vittu!" Zek yelled as the Unggoy exploded, showering the street with body parts.

For his part, 'Quetshadee seemed to ignore the fighting and instead, reached a hand up to his helmet.

"Shipmaster: primary target has been located," he declared as Zek leveled his rifle to try and obtain a shot. "Affirmative. It shall be done! Kig-Yar!"

Zek jumped and ducked back into cover. "Sire?"

"Obtain a higher vantage point and eliminate the Demon!"

Zek was hardly going to argue the point, but still, he couldn't help but ask, "But sire, were we not supposed to capture the Demon alive?"

"The Shipmaster has declared otherwise! The High Prophets will need solely be satisfied with the Demon's head! Now follow my commands Kig-Yar!"

"By your will!"

Zek sprang into action. Ignoring all the other warriors dashing in the direction of the fighting, Zek ran towards the nearest building. Smashing in the door with the butt of his rifle, he dashed up the nearest flight of stairs at a full sprint. Bursting through the door at the top, Zek found himself on the roof. He quickly looked around.

Directly in front of him was the building where the Demon was taking shelter. At the moment, the Demon was exchanging fire with a pair of T'vaoan warriors taking shelter on a rooftop across the street from Zek. As Zek watched, the T'vaoans whirled out from behind the small structure they were using for cover and began firing their rifles on the human building. Zek followed the path of their blamite rounds to see what they were shooting at, only to see a single human figure working on attaching a series of... something to the columns. What that something was, Zek had no idea, but he didn't care. As the figure returned fire, Zek leveled his rifle and began to draw a bead on the creature, but then paused as he realized the figure was far too small to be the Demon. Where was the Demon?

Deciding two T'vaoans were more than a match for a mere human, Zek opted not to reveal his presence just yet as he searched for where the Demon could be hiding. Was this all a simple distraction? But for what purpose? Based on all the communications chatter, several files were closing in from all sides on this position, making an escape for the Demon unlikely. Surely the Demon had to have known that, so why did –

Zek abruptly noticed the ship. He initially didn't see it because it was rather dark in the building and he had thought it was part of the wall, but as he looked over the entire structure for the Demon, one of the humans fired again and in the brief glow of the muzzle flash, he spotted the distinct form of a human dropship.

"They have a ship!" Zek exclaimed out loud in surprise. That explained why the humans had retreated here to this structure. They must have known this ship was here! He quickly grabbed his communicator.

"Evocatus 'Quetshadee!" he shouted. "The Demon has a ship inside that structure!"

"What!?"

"There's a ship!" Zek repeated, staring at the vessel in question. Now that he was paying attention, he could actually see the dropship vibrating, indicating its engines were active. But if that was the case, why hadn't they lifted off yet?

 _ **POOOOSSHHHH!**_

At the distinct sound of a human rocket being launched, Zek dove for cover. He looked up to see a number of rockets launching from the floor the ship was on and flying in all directions, one of which headed directly for the structure he had seen the T'vaoans taking cover behind.

"Brother, WATCH OUT!" Zek reflexively screamed even though there was no way for the T'vaoans to hear him from this distance over the sounds of all the fighting.

He watched as the rocket slammed into the cover and penetrated through the other side, forcing the T'vaoans to dive to the side. Strangely enough, the rocket failed to explode but it hardly mattered as the T'vaoans were now in the open, something the humans were quick to exploit. Plasma began raining down all around one of the T'vaoans, and Zek watched as his comrade snapped his rifle up, but just as he was about to pull the trigger a bolt smashed into his rifle, causing it to explode. Zek could see a single blamite round shoot straight up into the T'vaoan's head, killing him instantly.

"Ryökäle!" Zek snarled and started to bring his rifle to bear, but then -

 _ **POOOOSSHHHH!**_

The sound of more rockets firing sent Zek scrambling for the ground. Rockets sped in all directions, a few of which passed right over Zek's roof, and he laid there with his arms covering his head as he waited for the explosion.

 _ **THUNK!**_

Zek jumped as one of the rockets slammed into the ground right next to him. Letting out a cry of alarm, Zek started to scramble away on his hands and knees, but in his heart he knew it was going to be too late. As the rocket motor flared out, Zek slowly closed his eyes and waited for death...

…which never came.

After a few heartbeats, Zek cracked his eyelids open to see he was still alive, and that the rocket was just sitting there, smoking.

At first, Zek just sat there, unsure of what to do. Eventually, his curiosity took over and he scrambled to his feet and slowly approached the projectile.

Poking at it with the barrel of his rifle, he leapt back in alarm as the rocket body toppled over, revealing -

"They've got no explosives," Zek exclaimed as he realized the rocket was missing its head. "They've got no explosives! They're all duds!"

Feeling invigorated, Zek grabbed his rifle and turned around to engage the humans, secure in the fact they couldn't hit him. He searched for the figure that had been standing on the floor below where the ship had been, only the human wasn't there any longer. He started searching, only to see the human running up a nearby flight of stairs.

Taking a deep breath, Zek slowly exhaled as he took aim. Almost... there...

"Kig-Yar!"

Zek nearly jumped out of his skin at the angry shout behind him. He whirled around, only to see both Evocatus 'Quetshadee and Shipmaster 'Oteree emerging from the stairwell behind him.

"Where is the Demon!?" 'Oteree demanded to know as Zek did his best to resist the urge to curse them out.

"I think the Demon is in that ship over there sire!" Zek yelled, jabbing his rifle in the human's direction. "I think they're about to leave!"

"DISABLE THAT SHIP!"

'With what?' Zek wanted to ask, but he dared not. Instead, he leapt to his feet and whirled around in time to see one of the humans running towards the ship at a dead sprint.

Zek's rifle instantly appeared in his hands and he reflexively fired a single round. It was a perfect shot. He didn't see the round hit, but the human instantly dropped like an apple falling off the tree. Moments later, the door to the ship slammed closed.

"DESTROY THAT SHIP, NOW!" 'Oteree roared and Zek started unloading his rifle on the ship. Unfortunately his weapon was hardly designed to engage armor, so all his projectiles did was shatter against the dropship's hull. Nevertheless, Zek continued firing until he was out of ammo.

The cover to his magazine automatically popped open, and Zek started to reload, but before he could complete the motion, the ground suddenly trembled, causing him to stumble.

Alarmed, Zek looked up in time to see the human building beginning to fall apart as a series of explosions destroyed the columns holding the building up. Was that the Shipmaster's doing?

Before Zek could ask, the building abruptly collapsed! Zek could see chunks of concrete landing and shattering against the dropship's hull, and just as Zek was about to celebrate the destruction of the Demon, the ship's engines flared, abruptly launching straight out of the doomed building like a top on a bottle! Zek started shooting again, but before he could fire off more than a couple of shots, the ship did a near ninety degree turn skyward and launched itself vertically, straight into the air towards orbit.

Zek desperately unloaded the rest of his magazine at the dropship, but the human ship was far too fast for him to hit, and all of his rounds fell short.

Lowering his empty rifle, Zek watched as the human ship flew through the air before it finally disappeared into the darkness of the night.

Feeling a sinking sensation deep within his torso, Zek slowly turned around to see how 'Oteree would react to his inability to stop the ship.

'Oteree was standing on the roof, staring at the spot the human ship had disappeared to, with a look of absolute fury on his face. Before Zek could say anything, 'Oteree abruptly pulled out a communicator and brought it up to his mouth.

"Destroy that ship," he snarled and overhead, Zek could hear the howl of Banshee fighters starting to close in from all directions...

 **XXXXX**

 **UNSC** _ **Moonlight Sonata**_ _ **,**_ **High Orbit, Actium**

 **Luzader**

"Commander, sir?"

Luzader looked up from his display, where he was impatiently waiting for another status report from Captain Rogers. "What is it Lieutenant?"

"Sir, you wanted me to inform you the moment anything... unusual occurred within the city," the Lieutenant reminded him. "Well, sir, we've just picked up the signature of a Pelican launch."

"And? Pelicans are launching and landing all over the place."

"It's launching from behind enemy lines, sir."

That caught Luzader's attention.

"Put it on screen!" he demanded, climbing to his feet as his tired bridge staff began stirring themselves to full alert.

The main screen abruptly winked on, revealing an image of a single UNSC Pelican rapidly rising up from the ground. The Pelican had clearly seen some action at one point: it had plasma scoring all over its hull and it had some deep scratches in its dorsal and lateral armor plating, as if someone had taken a giant cheese grater to it. Also, Luzader could see the two Anvil rocket pods the Pelican had were completely depleted, indicating it had been in a fight at some point.

"Do we have comms?" Luzader asked as a sense of hope began to well up within. Surely this couldn't be a coincidence?

"No, sir, but the Pelican is broadcasting a valid IFF tag. Tag identifies it as... registration four five zero zero x-ray which, according to our records, is an Air Force D77-TC dropship assigned to the 77th Airlift Squadron, which in turn was assigned to the UNSC _Gerald Young_ , a _Gökçen_ -class attack transport that arrived in system nearly fourteen hours ago. However..." Luzader could see his technician frowning. "Sir, that Pelican was reported as having been shot down nearly twelve hours ago."

Luzader could feel a sense of excitement beginning to spread through his entire body. A Pelican that had been shot down behind enemy lines suddenly coming back to life? Covenant Elites never used human equipment, even if the alternative was death, and regular rank and file soldiers wouldn't know how to repair a Pelican and get it flying again. There could only be one possibility of who was inside that ship... a Spartan.

But he had to be sure.

"Reroute our nearest drone," Luzader commanded. "Let's see if we can't get visual of the cockpit- "

"Sir, look!" his Lieutenant exclaimed. "The Pelican run lights!"

Luzader snapped his head up to see the run lights on the Pelican were blinking in a systematic pattern. It wasn't hard to figure out what it was.

"That's Morse code!" Luzader snapped. "Get me a translation!"

"Already on it, sir!" his Lieutenant cried. "Looks like it's a series of numbers, sir, then a single letter, followed by three more numbers: eight niner six three five seven seven zero one seven Sierra zero six two."

The Lieutenant continued to say something else, but Luzader was no longer listening because at that moment, the world seemed to freeze as the significance of those numbers hit him like an ice cold bath.

"That's Maria's service number!" he blurted out. "That's classified information; only one person could have known that number! That's it, those are the Spartans!"

"Sir!" another technician suddenly screamed. "I'm picking up enemy signatures: Banshees, closing in fast!"

"On screen!"

The image on the screen zoomed out to reveal -

"God almighty," someone whispered as they spotted over fifty Banshees closing in fast on the damaged Pelican. There was no way a single Pelican could hope to survive against those odds, even with a Spartan at the helm.

"We need air support and we need it _now,"_ Luzader declared. "Lieutenant, what assets do we have in the area!?"

"A reconnaissance drone and that's it, sir!" his Lieutenant snapped. "But there are several Air Force and Marine Corps fighters in -"

"Get me Spaatz!" Luzader snapped.

To his immense irritation, Kanin, not Spaatz, appeared on his screen.

 _"Lieutenant Commander,"_ Kanin politely began. _"To what do we owe -"_

"Kanin, connect me to Admiral Spaatz, _now!"_ Luzader roughly interrupted. Kanin stiffened.

 _"Commander, I apologize,"_ he respectfully began, _"however the Admiral has -"_

"ONI executive override Echo Tango Sierra one one seven Hotel niner niner three, November Zulu Foxtrot seven!" Luzader spat out.

"… _override accepted. Connecting you now, sir."_

" _Commander Luzader?"_ Spaatz's surprised voice immediately sounded over the airwaves. _"What in the hell…?"_

"Admiral, I need your help, and I need it now," Luzader hurriedly said. "Long story short: there's a Pelican rising up from the surface of Actium, and I have reason to believe that it contains at least one member of Spartan Team Argon. I need you to redeploy whatever assets you have right now to protect that dropship!"

To Luzader's immense relief, Spaatz didn't bother wasting time asking stupid questions.

 _"Kanin, what assets do we have in the vicinity?"_

 _"Broadswords, sir, from the Air Force's No 187 Fighter Squadron, call sign: Omega Flight."_

 _"Send them in."_

 _"Aye, sir, rerouting now!"_

"Sir, with the amount of Bandits closing in on my Pelican, I'm going to need more than one squadron," Luzader warned.

In response, his console abruptly chimed.

 _"Whatever assets I have in the general AO,"_ Spaatz quickly explained. _"I'm hereby authorizing you command override to divert whatever and whoever you need to. I authenticate..."_

"Ops, start routing those fighters!" Luzader yelled before Spaatz could even finish.

"Yes, sir! Smithy, started connecting to all these units, just go straight down the line! O'Malley, start rerouting and get fighters over there to make me a flight corridor!"

"Aye aye Lieutenant! Actium Defense Command to call sign Easy Red: divert to heading..."

"...authenticate Tango Whiskey..."

"Orders are to engage all hostiles..."

"...priority one: protect that Pelican!"

Luzader stared intently at the main screen as his entire bridge exploded with activity as his crew began diverting one squadron after another towards that single Pelican rocketing its way towards high orbit. Enemy Banshees were still closing in from all directions, but just behind them, friendly contacts was starting to fill the screen as squadron after squadron were yanked off their current missions and diverted.

"Hang in there Spartan," Luzader whispered. "Hang in there. Help is on the way..."

 **XXXXX**

 **Thracia Province, Actium**

 **Zelda**

 _"Cyclops, this is Omega Flight: inbound, your station, sixty seconds!"_

Zelda hastily leveled out his Broadsword as he followed Odessa to the target area.

 _"6, this is you,"_ Odessa said over the radio. _"Move into attack position and standby to engage!"_

"Copy, into attack, seven klicks out," Zelda coolly replied as he reached out and armed four of the bombs he was carrying. "Pickle is hot… bomb bay doors are open..."

His Broadsword shook as a fuel rod cannon exploded nearby, but Zelda ignored it as he focused most of his attention on the counter counting down the distance to his target. He didn't really know what he was about to bomb. Apparently it was a large concentration of Covenant soldiers or something, but whatever it was, Zelda knew it was going to get erased when he dropped his four Mark 211, 1000 kilogram bombs in three... two... one...

"Bombs away bombs away bombs away!" Zelda yelled as he started to pick up the slack on his trigger...

 _ **"ABORT ABORT ABORT!"**_

"ABORTING!"

Zelda didn't think, he just reacted. Snatching away his finger like his trigger was on fire, at the same time, he yanked his control yoke to the right and banked _hard_ , breaking off from his approach.

"What the fuck!" Zelda exclaimed as soon as he was clear. He hurriedly disarmed his bombs and closed his bomb bay doors. "What the fucking shit was that? Why the fuck did those goddamn Cunt Munchers clear us hot, then immediately abort!?"

" _I don't fucking know man, fucking weekend warriors don't know what the fuck they're doing I guess. See, this is why I'm saying every fucking mud crunching unit has got to have a TACP assigned to them!"_ Odessa snarled

Zelda viciously nodded as he leveled out.

" _Uh… Omega Flight? Cyclops: where the fuck are our bombs!?"_

"Where the fuck do you think they went you fucking dumbass!" Zelda raged as he reached for the talk button on his radio, but then paused. "What the… hang on Odessa, that abort order came from FLEETCOM!"

" _Impossible,"_ Odessa immediately retorted. _"We got returned to ACC the moment we hit atmo!"_

"I can only tell you what I read buddy!" Zelda exclaimed. "6 to Leader: are you seeing this? Is this for real?"

 _"It is,"_ Bellum confirmed. _"I don't know what's going on, but we're getting a divert order directly from FLEETCOM HQ."_

That made Zelda shut up and sit up straight. FLEETCOM Headquarters? That meant the orders came directly from Admiral Lukas Spaatz, supreme commander of every military unit assigned to the entire _system_. What the hell was he doing ordering individual fighter squadrons around?

 _"Orders are still trickling in, but all fighters, divert to heading two nine two degrees and punch it!"_ Bellum snapped.

"What the hell is going on?" Zelda couldn't help but ask as he came about. "Where does the Supreme Commander get off on ordering us around like that!? Doesn't he have warships to play with!?"

 _"Might not be from the big man himself,"_ Odessa suggested but Zelda shook his head.

"No man," Zelda argued. "FLEETCOM? That's definitely Spaatz."

 _"Alright, listen up guys!"_ Bellum barked. _"Apparently there's a high priority Pelican trying to make it to high orbit. Our objective is to ensure that happens, no matter what."_

"With what?" Zelda immediately retorted. "We're not currently configured for air to air combat; Command yanked us to do CAS missions!"

 _"We're just going to have to figure it out!"_ Bellum insisted. _"Orders are: protect the Pelican. All other concerns are secondary."_

Zelda let out a string of curses as he glanced at his computer. Aside from all the bombs and ATGMs he was carrying he had six short-range anti-air missiles for self-defense purposes. What was he supposed to do, ram anything that so much as looked at the Pelican funny? Plus…

"Didn't we do something like this once already today?"

" _Guess we get to do it again,"_ Odessa replied with a verbal shrug.

" _Good news is, we're not the only ones being called in to support,"_ Bellum continued, _"but we are the closest. So lock it down and get ready to be thrown back into the shit!"_

Zelda gritted his teeth. This was not going to end well.

 _"Leader, this is 12, be advised: I'm picking up multiple Bandits on my long range sensors!"_

 _"Yeah, I see them too!"_ Bellum confirmed. _"All Broadswords: punch it! We're going straight in!"_

As Zelda activated his afterburners, he glanced at his long distance radar to see how many Bandits they were up against, and felt the saliva in his mouth dry up a little.

"That's a lot of fighters," Zelda noted.

 _"No shit. Must be every damn Banshee on the fucking planet!"_

 _"Anyone got eyes on the package!?"_ Bellum yelled as they approached the outer edge of the swarm.

Zelda looked around.

"Negative..." he started to say. "Wait! Thirty degrees up, maybe two klicks away!"

 _"What... okay, I see it!"_ Bellum yelled.

 _"Jesus Christ,"_ someone else muttered and Zelda couldn't blame him.

The lead Banshees had already gotten to within engagement distance of the Pelican and had promptly opened fire, throwing all sorts of plasma and fuel rod cannons in the Pelican's direction. The Pelican was evading with a sense of grace Zelda hadn't realized dropships were capable of, dodging all the incoming fire with all sorts of loops and rolls, all the while continuing to angle up towards the upper atmosphere. Unfortunately for the Pelican though, a number of Banshee flights had been cruising towards the area at a much higher altitude, and upon reaching the engagement envelope of their weapons, began diving on the Pelican, forcing the dropship to break off.

"That Pelican isn't going to be able to continue climbing with those Banshees in the way!" Zelda warned.

 _"I'm not even worried about the Banshees. If this keeps up, that Pelican won't be able to build up enough speed to reach escape velocity!_ " Bellum pointed out.

"Fuck! Well, what's the plan here then boss!?"

 _"Go loud! We got to draw the attention of those Banshees off the package and onto us! Omega Flight: you are weapons free!"_

Zelda immediately dropped his crosshairs over one of the furthest Banshees and pulled the trigger

"Fox three!" he yelled, sending one of his missiles rocketing downrange.

He watched as his missile streaked towards the target, however the Banshee easily picked up on the missile's approach. The Banshee began launching all sorts of countermeasures, sending the missile verging off course where it self-destructed not too far away.

At that, a handful of Banshees immediately broke off pursuit, banked, and started heading in Zelda's direction.

"Well, that got their attention," Zelda muttered. "Here they come!"

 _"Omega Flight! Assume an echelon formation and standby to engage!"_

Zelda nudged his fighter so that it was positioned to the left and just behind Odessa's. He tightly gripped his control yoke as the entire squadron rocketed towards the incoming Banshees, which were assuming some sort of staggered formation. The sight was honestly a bit intimidating, even for Zelda seeing all those Banshees headed in their direction. Maybe a little over a third had broken off their pursuit of the Pelican meaning Omega Flight was going to be going in outnumbered, outgunned, and possibly outmatched. They were going to need reinforcements and fast, otherwise this was going to be a really short fight.

 _ **SWOOSH SWOOSH BOOM!**_

Two Banshees were sent tumbling out of the sky as two shells and a single Medusa missile came streaking in and exploded amongst the largest group of fighters, sending the entire formation scattering in all directions. Zelda glanced at his sensors as the signatures of four friendly Navy Longswords appeared on his radar.

 _"Omega Flight,"_ an unknown voice sounded over Zelda's radio. _"This is Tanto Squadron, coming up on your pos on your nine o'clock. Divert to heading three zero zero and head straight for the package: we'll clear a path for you, over."_

 _"Copy! Omega Flight, break formation and follow me in!"_

Zelda gratefully broke contact as the Longswords came swooping in. Armed with two fifty millimeter coil guns, a single 120mm ventral cannon equipped with proximity fuses, and various air to air missiles, the Longswords would be far better equipped to deal with the swarm of lightly armored Banshees in front of them than the Broadswords would be.

The Longswords came screaming in from above, weapons blazing. They plowed right into the mass of Banshees, sending the Covenant scattering and leaving giant gaps in their formation. Angling for one said hole, Zelda punched in his afterburners, maneuvering his way past various Banshees as he tried to work his way towards the package in the distance.

Most of the Banshees quickly got out of his way, not willing to risk a head on collision even if doing so would stop Zelda right in his tracks. But that didn't mean they weren't willing to pursue.

 _ **FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ!**_

Zelda jerked as a burst of bright blue plasma bolts passed right over his cockpit. Frantically looking around, he spotted two Banshees that had broken away from the main group and were currently pursuing the Broadswords.

"Leader, 6: head's up! Bandits, on our six!" Zelda yelled out in warning even as he dodged another burst of plasma fire.

 _"Copy, I see 'em!"_ Bellum yelled back. _"Okay, 5 and 6, break off and cover our six! The rest of you, on me!"_

 _"Copy."_

"Copy!"

 _"Zelda, follow my lead,"_ Odessa ordered. _"On my mark, we'll do a hard bank to the right, see if we can't get these assholes to follow us, copy?"_

"Yeah, got it!" Zelda replied.

 _"Alright, wait for my command... and, EXECUTE!"_

Zelda promptly grabbed his stick and yanked it hard to the right. He could feel himself getting shoved hard against his seat as his Broadsword strained to make as tight of a turn as was possible at the speeds Zelda was currently flying at. Slightly in front of him, he could see Odessa doing the same thing.

 _"Status Zelda?"_ Odessa demanded to know as soon as they pulled out of their turn. _"Did those Banshees follow us?"_

Zelda started to turn around but before he could -

 _ **FWOOZ!**_

"Yeah, I'd say so!" Zelda yelped as a plasma bolt spattered against his left wing. Fortunately, it was only a grazing shot; but even then, it was enough to leave a black mark on his fighter's outer hull.

 _"Good, let's keep it that way!"_ Odessa commanded. _"Fall back towards the direction of the main fighting; Bellum and the rest of the squadron are going to have enough problems trying to keep the rest of the Banshees off that Pelican, let's not add to their woes!"_

"Yeah, yeah, got it!" Zelda yelled back as he threw his Broadsword into a spin. "Come on motherfucker!"

The Banshees on his tail failed to respond and instead, continued to throw plasma in his direction. As Zelda worked on avoiding getting hit, a thought suddenly struck him.

"Hey Odessa!" he called out between gritted teeth.

" _What."_

"You ever notice how the tactics of every single Covie pilot we run across seem to consist of doing one thing? Namely: throw as much plasma into the air and hope they hit something?"

 _"Accuracy by volume I guess!"_ Odessa replied. _"Must be nice not having to worry about running out of ammo!"_

"No - " Zelda hastily threw his fighter into an aileron roll as one of the Banshees threw a fuel rod in his direction. "No shit. Anyways, don't know about you, but I'm about ready to lose these fools!"

" _Yeah, sure, why not? We're far enough away from the others. You go left, I'll go right and we'll meet up again at the rally point. Ready? EXECUTE!"_

Zelda immediately jerked his stick and began making a hard turn to the left, away from Odessa. One of the Banshees behind him quickly followed suit, but unlike before where he was trying to make sure the Banshee stayed on his tail, this time Zelda was attempting to maneuver in such a way that he'd end up _behind_ the Banshee. So, while Zelda banked, he also started throttling back on his speed while at the same time, throwing his Broadsword into a roll both up and away from the turn. His slight reduction in speed coupled with the assistance of gravity allowed Zelda to achieve a much tighter turn and as he pulled out of his roll and reentered his initial turn, he found himself just behind his pursuer.

The Banshee immediately dove in an attempt to lose Zelda by conducting a quick outside loop, but it was too late as Zelda had already achieved a missile lock.

"Fox one," Zelda commanded in a bored voice and pulled the trigger.

He could hear a _thunk_ as his missile departed the rails and he watched as it began speeding in the direction of the Banshee. The Elite pilot desperately tried to evade, throwing all sorts of countermeasures all over the place, but it was just too late. As Zelda whipped by overhead, he could just barely feel the shockwave from the blast as the Banshee disintegrated into one large ball of fire that lit up the sky.

Zelda smirked to himself. Killing Covenant never really got old.

"One down!" he announced over his radio. "5, what's your position, over?"

 _"Hang on,"_ came Odessa's strained reply. _"Kind of... busy... at the moment..."_

Deciding that meant Odessa needed some help, Zelda cast around, looking for him. It wasn't easy, as a couple of other friendly squadrons had entered the AO, filling his radar with friendly contacts. Eventually though, he was able to spot a single blue dot being pursued by a single red dot, flying away from the heaviest of the fighting.

Without another word, Zelda rolled to the right and took off in their direction. As he approached their location, Zelda could see a single Banshee filling the air with plasma as the Elite pilot desperately tried to shoot down the Broadsword flying in front of him.

"5, this is 6," Zelda announced over the radio. "Be advised, I'm coming up behind the Banshee that's on your six."

 _"What are you doing here Zelda?"_ Odessa asked, sounding surprised.

Zelda shrugged. "Sounded like you need some help."

 _"...not really? But I guess if you're here already, might as well. Do me a favor and start painting that Banshee, will you?"_

Feeling a bit mystified, Zelda nevertheless obeyed. Dropping his crosshairs over the rear of the Banshee, Zelda started pinging the Banshee, trying to make it seem like he was trying to obtain a lock without actually obtaining one.

The effect was almost instantaneous. The Banshee began deploying countermeasures, trying to juke Zelda's "lock" while at the same time, trying to stay on Odessa's rear. However, with the Elite pilot ever so slightly distracted, that was when Odessa struck. Throwing his Broadsword into a tight diameter loop, Odessa slipped behind the Banshee in question. Before the Covenant pilot could react, Odessa fired.

" _Fox one,"_ Odessa announced and peeled away as the Banshee exploded.

Spinning to the right, Zelda pulled up so he was next to Odessa.

"The hell was that all about?" he couldn't help but ask.

 _"Thought I told you to fall back and assist Bellum with securing the package once you were free and clear?"_

Zelda thought about it for a moment. "Uh... no. You didn't."

 _"Huh,"_ Odessa said thoughtfully. _"Must be more tired than I thought. Anyways, follow me: we're heading back to Bellum."_

Together they turned around and headed back in the direction where Zelda had last seen the rest of the squadron and the package was. The area was in complete chaos. More and more friendly fighter squadrons had joined the fight but because they were coming piecemeal and from multiple directions, with no AWACS planes in the AO to help coordinate the actions of all the fighters, the entire area had turned into one giant mass melee of individual dogfights.

Zelda jerked to the side as a stray burst of plasma whipped past him. Seconds later, two Banshees roared past him in a dive and Zelda reflexively fired his main cannons, but the Banshees were long gone before his rounds even came close to hitting. A split second later, his master caution started sounding, and Zelda hastily deployed countermeasures as a fuel rod cannon came flying in. Glancing at his radar, he spotted a Banshee on an intercept course, heading straight at him from his nine o'clock, but before the Banshee could even get halfway, the Covenant vehicle was struck by a single 120mm, destroying the fighter instantly.

Glancing skyward, Zelda spotted the Longsword that had fired the shell pulling out from a dive, but before the pilot could level out, the Longsword was struck amidship by two fuel rod cannons, which cut the massive fighter in half.

"Shit!" Zelda swore as the remains of the Longsword went spiraling to the ground, and he looked around, trying to spot the escape capsule which would indicate the crew had managed to eject in time, but he couldn't see it. "Fuck!"

 _"WARNING, COLLISION ALERT."_

Zelda's head snapped forward in time to see an out of control flaming Wombat come flying right towards him on a head-on collision course.

"Oh fuck!" Zelda yelped in alarm and grabbed his stick, but before he could do anything, the Wombat exploded, sending all sorts of shrapnel forward.

"Fuck! I got to get out of this shit!" Zelda yelled to himself as he rode out the ensusing turbulence. It was way too crowded here.

Yanking back on his control yoke, Zelda tried to climb above the area where most of the fighting was taking place, but it was way too hard for Zelda to figure where that was.

 _"Zelda! You okay?"_

"Just got a little singed is all," Zelda reported as he quickly finished a diagnostic check.

 _"Good."_

Odessa started to say something else, but before he could finish, he was abruptly cut off.

 _"Omegas 5 and 6, this is Leader: come in! What's your status?"_

 _"Leader, this is 5,"_ Odessa replied. _"We're both green and heading back to your area."_

 _"Negative! Banshees have cut us off from the package! Get to the package! If that Pelican goes down, then we're all fucked!"_

 _"Copy. We're on our way Leader,"_ Odessa smoothly replied.

"Man, what the fuck is in that Pelican?" Zelda couldn't help but ask.

 _"Does it matter? FLEETCOM wants it alive, so that's what we've got to do. Hey, I've got eyes on. Seven oh degrees."_

Zelda glanced at his sensors and checked the spot Odessa had indicated. Sure enough, he spotted the Pelican, flying blissfully through the air, as if there wasn't a battle raging not too far away.

"Why the hell hasn't that damn Pelican gone for high orbit yet?" Zelda wondered out loud.

 _"No idea. Head's up! I'm picking up Bandits closing in on the package from below!"_

Zelda glanced at his radar and spotted the signatures of at least six Banshees on an intercept course to the Pelican, coming from below.

"I see them!"

 _"Move to intercept!"_

Zelda immediately ignited his afterburners, trying to put his fighter in a position between the Pelican and the incoming Banshees. As he did, he happened to spot the signatures of more Covenant aircraft inbound from above, but fortunately another UNSC fighter squadron was already inbound.

However, the sight did make Zelda realize one thing: with this many enemy fighters in the AO, there was no way that Pelican was making it to high orbit under its own power.

They were going to need some more help.

 **XXXXX**

 **Heliopolis Station, High Orbit, Actium**

 **Spaatz**

They needed more help.

That was the only conclusion Spaatz could come up with as he watched the aerial battle unfold. The Pelican carrying Argon Team desperately worked to find a way up to high orbit and escape, while all sorts of UNSC fighters from a wide range of squadrons worked to keep the Banshees at bay. At the moment, both sides were about equal in size and strength, but whereas the UNSC needed to be conscientious about the need to keep the Pelican alive, all the Covenant needed to do was focus on shooting everything in sight. Eventually, the Banshees would get through, and there would be nothing the fighters could do to stop them. They needed a way to turn the tides in their favor and the only way Spaatz could think to do that was to send one of his warships down.

Unfortunately, the stalemate that had formed hours ago was still ongoing as both fleets sort of wearily eyed each other, waiting for someone to make the first mistake. If Spaatz allowed even a single ship to depart his task force to retrieve that Pelican, it could potentially weaken his fleet's defensive posture and put his forces at the disadvantage.

Yet, at the same time, his standing orders from earlier this morning still remained the same: he simply could not allow a high valued asset like Argon Team to fall into the hands of the Covenant. At this point, it would probably be easier to blow the Pelican out of the sky himself, but Spaatz couldn't do that for two simple reasons: one, it would be terrible for morale for all soldiers involved in this fight right to see something like that happen, especially as they wouldn't have the context to understand _why_ it happened. And then second, given the amount of resources already expended attempting to locate said Spartan team, it would simply be a waste to lose them _now_ , when they were so close to being recovered.

Spaatz sighed. Well, at least he'd have the initiative.

"Kanin."

Kanin instantly appeared by his side. "Sir?"

"Alert Task Force Whiskey: sound general quarters and prepare for combat."

"Aye, sir."

"I also need a ship to go down and pluck that Pelican from orbit. Preferably one that we won't miss in this upcoming battle."

"Searching now, sir. I have one. The UNSC _Gabrielle_ , a _Halberd_ -class destroyer assigned to Destroyer Squadron 29. Her captain reports she is operating at less than fifty percent efficiency due to most of her crew having been on leave when the invasion began. She hasn't been able to contribute much to the space battles, however she would be able to enter the atmosphere, retrieve the Spartans, and withdraw without too much difficulty."

Spaatz frowned. He had been hoping for a frigate as those ships had a much larger hanger bay than destroyers. But then again, _Halberd_ -class destroyers did have facilities to store and operate two separate Pelican dropships at the same time, plus her firepower and armor would allow the ship to survive relatively unscathed against the light Banshees.

"Do it," he commanded. "Divert the _Gabrielle_ and extract that Pelican. And alert Commander Luzader; no doubt he's going to want to get a team over there as soon as they're extracted.

"Yes, sir."

Spaatz immediately turned away an activated his display.

"Captain Yirenkyi."

An image of Yirenkyi appeared.

"Sir?"

"Our timeline has moved up. Execute Operation Beta Six."

"Aye, sir!"

The call immediately terminated and Spaatz glanced at his display as his ships, sitting around inactive for many hours now, suddenly started coming alive again as they moved into position. He wasn't the only one to notice: across the vast expanse of space, the Covenant fleet was also beginning to come alive as they started to react to the movements of the UNSC fleet. Soon, this entire area would be washed with death once more.

In the midst of all the chaos, a single _Halberd_ -class ship was rapidly pulling away from the crowd and heading on a direct course towards the interior of the planet. Already, he could see the _Gabrielle's_ hull beginning to glow as it started to pass through Actium's upper atmosphere.

"Get that dropship," Spaatz muttered under his breath, "then get out quick."

He could only hope they would be able to make it in time.

 **XXXXX**

 **UNSC** _ **Moonlight Sonata,**_ **High Orbit, Actium**

 **Luzader**

Things were getting intense.

Luzader sat on the edge of his seat as he watched the destroyer Spaatz had rerouted descend through the atmosphere. Back in orbit, both the UNSC and Covenant fleets were exploding with furious activity, disturbed by the displacement of a single warship after so many hours, but what they were doing beyond that, Luzader had no idea as his sole focus was on that single destroyer.

The destroyer's hull was glowing with heat as the ship hurtled through the clouds and descended into the chaos. Upon entering the battlefield, it immediately began drawing fire from all directions as the Covenant quickly highlighted that ship as the single largest threat to their continued existence. The destroyer didn't take it lying down though, and every single one of her anti-aircraft guns were blazing away as the ship plowed its way through the air in the direction of Spartan Team Argon.

As it travelled, Luzader could see the doors to one of the destroyer's hangers sliding open, revealing a single glowing dot of light on the destroyer's otherwise dull gray hull. A beacon of hope, in a sense.

Looking back at the Pelican, Luzader could see Maria diverting course and heading straight for that beacon, while the two Air Force Broadswords that had been escorting her peeled off to try and deter any pursuit. Looking at a nearby monitor which was currently displaying their loadouts, Luzader could tell both Broadswords didn't have much left in terms of AAMs, but hopefully they wouldn't have to hold back the Covenant for long.

Zooming in so that the camera was solely focused on Spartan Team Argon, Luzader tried to get a gauge of just how fast Maria was flying. It was fast; almost too fast and by the looks of it, Maria wasn't planning on slowing down anytime soon. That was going to complicate things.

"Get a direct line to that destroyer's captain," Luzader demanded without looking away. "Inform him the Pelican he's about to recover is containing top secret, eyes only cargo, and that no one, under pain of treason, is to attempt to look inside. Let's try and limit the amount of people who could possibly be exposed to the Spartans, especially when they're in this state."

"Aye, sir."

"And prep an away team," he continued. "Navy commandos only. I want this situation brought under control ASAP!"

His crew barked out an acknowledgment, however Luzader was no longer paying attention. Instead, he watched intently as Argon Team's Pelican flew right through the open hangar bay doors and into the destroyer at top speeds, and Luzader couldn't help but cringe as he imagined what sort of damage that would do to both the ship and her cargo.

Still, as the hangar bay doors slammed shut, Luzader couldn't help but let out a mute sigh of relief. Argon Team was secured.

Unfortunately, that was the easy part.

"Get that destroyer out of there!" Luzader demanded even as the destroyer's engines flared and the destroyer began to ascend, building up speed in order to try and achieve escape velocity. However, the Covenant had no intentions of simply letting that ship out of their grasp.

"Sir!" his technician cried out. "We're picking up a signal: the Banshees! They're conducting kamikaze runs!"

"What!?" Luzader roared, leaping to his feet but in a way, it made total sense: Banshees normally didn't have enough firepower to take down a UNSC destroyer by themselves. But if they could damage the engines and force the destroyer to crash land on the surface of the colony...

"Divert all fighters!" Luzader hollered. "New objective: protect that destroyer at all cost!"

 **XXXXX**

 **Upper Stratosphere, Byzas**

 **Zelda**

 _"Protect that destroyer at all cost!"_

"With fucking what!?" Zelda demanded to no one in particular as he dodged a fuel rod cannon fired in his direction. "6 to Leader, be advised I am black on AAMs!"

 _"6, get in close and use your guns! We have got to make sure the destroyer is able to get away!"_

"What!? That doesn't fucking help at all!" Zelda yelled in frustration. "What the fuck was so goddamn important on that fucking Pelican!?"

 _"6, stay on my ass!"_ Odessa yelled over the radio. _"We got to get in while the Covies are still trying to reorganize!"_

"They're not trying to fucking reorganize at all! They're trying to fly their crazy asses into the ship itself!"

 _"Then stop them!"_

"God dammit people! It's not that fucking easy!" Zelda raged.

However with no other recourse available to him, all Zelda could do was point his fighter up and rocket skyward towards orbit. With his auxiliary engines having been damaged earlier this morning, there was no way Zelda could achieve escape velocity to make it to orbit, but at the very least he could catch up to the destroyer. The massive bulk of the Naval warship loomed out of the darkness in front of him and zooming in, Zelda could see little blue dots of light representing Banshees as they fired their boosters and tried to slam into the destroyer's engines at Mach speeds.

 _"Banshees are trying to catch up to the destroyer! Omega Flight: stop them!"_

Dropping his crosshairs over one of the distant blue dots, Zelda pulled the trigger.

 _ **BOOMBOOM**_

Zelda watched as his rounds streaked towards the Banshee, but the fighter was outside of Zelda's maximum range for his guns, even at this altitude. Zelda swore. He needed to get closer.

But before Zelda could do anything, the Banshee in question fired its boosters and flew right into the destroyer.

 _ **KABOOM!**_

Blue flames shot out in every direction and although the Banshee had just missed the destroyer's main thrusters due to some last minute evasive maneuvers on the destroyer's part, Zelda could still see a large glowing hole in the destroyer's hull from where the Banshee had hit. Navy destroyers may have had more armor and armament when compared to smaller warships like frigates or corvettes, but they still shared the same weakness as everything else: because of the location of their engines, their rear was always the most vulnerable place on a ship.

"Shit," Zelda swore.

 _"Head's up! Looks like we've got another wave inbound! Omega Flight: move to intercept!"_

"Double shit!" Zelda yelled as he glanced at his radar. Another six Banshees were rapidly rising up from a lower altitude.

 _"6, with me!"_ Odessa desperately yelled. _"We're heading straight down!"_

Zelda gritted his teeth and yanked his stick to the side, rolling into a dive and heading straight for the incoming Banshees.

 _"6, engage!"_

Zelda could see Odessa open fire with his cannons, and he moved to follow suit. Dropping his crosshairs over the lead Banshee, Zelda opened up.

 _ **BOOMBOOMBOOM!**_

Zelda's rounds streaked towards the Banshees, missing them by a few meters, and he started to walk them on target when his master caution went off and he noticed one of the Banshees prepping to fire a fuel rod cannon.

"Flares!" Zelda spat as he maintained his course.

 _beepbeepbeep_

An alert sounded in his ears and bright red letters began flashing before his very eyes:

 _"COUNTERMEASURES DEPLETED."_

"Oh shit!" Zelda yelled even as the Banshee fired.

 _"Zelda, INCOMING!"_

The fuel rod cannon began rapidly climbing and Zelda could see Odessa ejecting flares but the fuel rod hadn't been aimed at him, it had been aimed at Zelda. However, without countermeasures, he had no way to break the lock and being in a dive meant trying to maneuver out of the way would be almost impossible as breaking away would take too much time! Zelda had very few options to escape, and even less time to think about it, so he immediately did the first thing that came to mind: he armed two of his Mark 211 bombs and dropped them.

 _Clung. Clung._

Zelda could hear both bombs successfully detaching from their internal mounts and he could almost hear them whistling as they dropped. Immediately, he felt stupid: what were bombs going to do against the fuel rod cannon? He should have taken the risk of breaking off. Hopefully he still had time...

Grabbing his stick, Zelda yanked back _hard_ , trying to pull out of his dive.

 _"6, where are you going!?"_ he heard Odessa cry out, but Zelda couldn't respond even if he wanted to as he was being slammed hard against his seat by the g-force, the result of trying to pull out of such a steep dive at such high speeds.

As he struggled to recover his breath, Zelda glanced at his scopes to see where that fuel rod cannon was and to his immense surprise, he saw the fuel rod was actually turning and heading straight for his bombs. How or why the bombs had attracted the fuel rod Zelda had no idea as fuel rods seemed to be rather inconsistent in how they worked, but even as Zelda leveled out, the fuel rod and the bombs collided.

 _ **WABOOMWABOOM!**_

The fuel rod cannon slammed into the first bomb, setting it off which in turn set off the second one. A massive fireball ripped through the sky as all two thousand kilograms worth of explosive power was set off, causing Zelda's sensors to go haywire and in that moment, Zelda realized he had a small window of opportunity.

"Oh, this is a bad idea!" Zelda groaned even as he slammed his stick forward and dove once more.

Rocketing straight towards the expanding fireball of gas and heat, Zelda gritted his teeth as he flew right through the shockwave which set off all sorts of alarms as his Broadsword violently shook. But as he emerged through on the other side, he could see three Banshees flying towards him less than five hundred meters away from him, looking totally unprepared for Zelda to emerge from the fireball. Zelda didn't hesitate.

"Guns guns guns!" he roared as he locked onto the lead Banshee and opened fire.

The Banshee split apart before exploding and Zelda hurriedly tried to lock on to one of the remaining Covenant fighters, but he was flying too fast and was unable to accomplish much more as he whipped past them both.

As he flew right passed the Banshees, Zelda found himself just outside where most of the fighting was taking place and Zelda let out a sigh of relief. This was getting to be too much, even for him. He had to get out of here, rearm and refuel. Surely someone else could take his place at this point?

 _"6, this is Odessa, give me a status update!"_

Zelda grabbed his mic.

"5, this is 6," he wearily reported. "I'm still flying, but I need to RTB. I'm black on AAMs, black on countermeasures, and running low on ammo for my thirty-five mil. Requesting permission to return to base, over."

 _"No can do 6!"_ Bellum abruptly cut in over the radio. _"We still got Banshees swarming all over this destroyer! I need you and 5 back here, NOW!"_

"WHAT FUCKING FOR!?" Zelda bellowed at the top of his lungs. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE PROTECTING!?"

 _"6, say again your last!?"_

Belatedly, Zelda realized he had accidently hit his talk button while he was raging and this, Bellum must have just caught the very tail end of his rant. He reached out to acknowledge her response when -

 _"Zelda, TWO ON YOUR SIX!"_

Zelda immediately threw himself into a spin and thus, was able to dodge the first burst of plasma directed his way. Glancing at his rear scopes, he spotted the two Banshees he had blown past just a few moments ago pulling out of their dive and locking on to the rear of his fighter. This time, Zelda didn't hesitate.

"Mayday mayday mayday, this is Omega-6: I got two Banshees on my six, I can't shake them!" Zelda urgently yelled into his radio. "I got nothing to deal with them; zero, zip, nada! I need immediate backup!"

 _"5, are you in any position to backup 6?"_

 _"Negative, I've got two Banshees of my own to deal with!"_

 _"6, be advised, no one is in your immediate vicinity to help out! All available fighters are supporting this destroyer! Try to gain some altitude and get back here so we can support!"_

"God dammit Bellum, if I find out you sent these two Banshees after me just to get me back on the mission, I'm going to fucking shoot you!" Zelda yelled. "Gah! Come on you fuckers!"

Yanking back on his stick, Zelda rapidly began to ascend in the direction of where the Navy destroyer was still making its way to orbit. Broadswords, Longswords, Wombats, Banshees, even a couple of Seraphs were intertwined around the destroyer, flying and shooting at each other and at the destroyer. Despite the chaos, the two Banshees remained doggedly on his tail, firing nonstop and Zelda swore as they hit _something_ on his fighter, though he couldn't tell what.

"Leader, this is Omega-6," Zelda declared. "I'm in the vicinity of the destroyer! What's your position, over?"

 _"Omega-6, this is Leader, do you copy?"_

Zelda glanced at his mic to make sure he had actually depressed the button all the way. "Leader, this is 6: I read you loud and clear! Where is my fucking backup!?"

 _"Leader to any Omega Flight elements: does anyone have eyes on Omega-6!?"_

"Dammit, I'm right fucking here!" Zelda snarled as he hastily glanced at his computer and then swore. Apparently that 'something' the Banshees had hit was his radio receiver. The plasma or EMP or whatever had damaged it to the point Zelda could still receive, he just couldn't transmit. He was on his own for the moment. "Fucking shit!"

Glancing at his rear scopes, Zelda desperately tried to figure out a way to lose the Banshees on his tail, but he couldn't think of anything. He had no options, no chance of escape, and the Covenant didn't seem interested in letting him go. While Zelda could continue to dodge their shots for the moment, he couldn't do it indefinitely and eventually, the Covenant would hit him somewhere he couldn't afford to get hit.

"Can anyone hear me!?" Zelda desperately yelled into his radio, just in case, as he dove towards the destroyer in the hopes their AA batteries would lock on to the Banshees behind him and shoot them down for him. However, with both sides intermingled like they were, the destroyer must have turned the guns off to prevent the chance of friendly fire, as they weren't firing. "Fuck, fuck, FUCK!"

Time was running out for Zelda. He needed a way out, _now_.

In desperation, Zelda looped around the destroyer and headed for the rear, towards the destroyer's engines. Technically, he was supposed to be leading the Banshees _away_ from the destroyer's engines, but fuck it. At this point, Zelda could only hope that upon reaching the engines, the Banshees would divert to engage _that_ instead and leave him the fuck alone.

 _"Wait a minute; Leader, this is 12, I think I got him! Point one seven six, flying right by the_ Gabrielle's _main thrusters!"_

 _"I see it! Zelda, is that you flying by the_ Gabrielle's _main engines!?"_

'YES!' Zelda wanted to scream, but not being able to transmit, he didn't bother wasting his breath. Instead, he glanced over his shoulder to see how close the Banshees were getting.

 _"Zelda, if that is you, get the fuck out of there! That destroyer is about to ignite their main boosters and head to high orbit! Zelda, GET OUT OF THERE!"_

...main boosters...

The phrase bounced around in Zelda's head for a moment. Then, all of a sudden, he realized how he was going to lose those Banshees.

"Alright you fuckers," he snarled out loud "you want to play? Huh? Is that it? Then why don't you fucking try this on for size!?"

Gripping his stick, Zelda looped around until he was flying directly under the _Gabrielle's_ main thrusters as the destroyer angled upwards. Her massive engines loomed right over Zelda's head. They didn't seem that big from a distance, especially when compared to the rest of the ship, but up close, it was like looking into the heart of a volcano that was about ready to consume all. Zelda's Broadsword began violent shaking as he passed right through the turbulence caused by the destroyer's engine exhaust but as bad as this was, Zelda knew it was about to get so much worse. Even now, looking up, he could see the engine's exhaust slowly changing colors, going from a bright orange, to a white-blue color as their prepared to ignite their main boosters and finally fly free of Actium's gravity.

"Come on _, come on!"_ Zelda urged as he fought to fly clear. He glanced behind him. The two Banshees were still on his tail, blazing away, somehow ignore of what was about to happen next. "Almost there..."

 _"Zelda! Boosters igniting in three... two..."_

Zelda abruptly found himself out from under the shadow that had been cast by the _Gabrielle_ , and in open air once more. He quickly banked to the left and angled his fighter so he could see what happened next.

 _"...one."_

Blue flames suddenly erupted from the rear of the destroyer as all of her engines simultaneously ignited and she began to rapidly pick up speed. The Banshees were too far away from the engines to actually be consumed by the flames, but the amount of energy and exhaust needed to propel a ship the size and mass of a _Halberd_ -class destroyer to escape velocities was enormous, and there wasn't a single one-manned fighter in existence that could withstand that sort of pressure. The Banshees were ripped to shreds.

"Ha-ha!" Zelda cheered. "Take that you sons of bitches!"

Unaware of what had just transpired, the destroyer continued to rocket skyward. Fighters from both sides quickly scrambled to get out of the way, but one Seraph was just a bit too slow and the _Gabrielle's_ hardened bow slammed into it, causing the Seraph to explode in a furious blue fireball, and the destroyer continued, unimpeded. A few Banshees tried to fire on the destroyer, but for the most part, all parties assembled could tell that unless the Covenant sent down one of their warships the UNSC _Gabrielle_ , and whatever mysterious cargo that Pelican had been carrying, was free and clear.

 _"Omega Flight! Break contact!"_ Bellum commanded and Zelda gratefully turned his fighter and headed in the direction the rest of his squadron was escaping in. _"All pilots, RTB."_

 _"We're done here."_

 **XXXXX**

 **Covenant designated Landing Zone: Deliverance**

 **Zek**

"Sire? The Demons have escaped."

That single call over the communicator was more than enough to send shivers down Zek's spine. Very slowly, as to not draw attention to himself, Zek glanced in 'Oteree's direction to see how he would react. It didn't look promising as 'Oteree didn't so much as look angry, he simply wasn't showing any emotion. At all. Which somehow made it all the more terrifying. Anger, Zek could handle. At least he knew what to expect. But with the way 'Oteree was right now? Zek didn't know whether curling up in a ball or fleeing as fast as he could was the better response.

"Sire?" 'Quetshadee cautiously asked in the background. "What are your orders?"

'Oteree exhaled, and that single motion was almost enough to cause Zek to go screaming for cover as the sigh was single-handedly the most terrifying sound Zek had heard since his arrival on this planet. Zek had no idea such... ire, could be conveyed by such a simple motion. Even 'Quetshadee, Zek couldn't help but note, seemed about ready to flee.

"Destroy the humans," 'Oteree muttered.

'Quetshadee and Zek exchanged a confused look.

"Sire...?" 'Quetshadee delicately asked.

'Oteree suddenly whirled around, making Zek jump in alarm.

"DESTROY THE HUMANS!" 'Oteree roared. No longer a stoic rock of nothingness. Instead, he was now a volcano of white hot fury. "CRUSH THEM, GRIND THEM, EXTERMINATE THEM ALL! EVOCATUS, TAKE YOUR TROOPS, ALL YOUR LEGIONS, AND DESTROY THE HUMANS! BATHE THIS ENTIRE PATHETIC WORLD IN THEIR BLOOD! MAKE THE VERY GROUND TREMBLE WITH OUR FURY!"

"BY YOUR WILL SIRE!" Zek reflexively bellowed alongside 'Quetshadee.

However, in doing so, it seemed to have reminded 'Oteree that Zek was still standing there as he leaned in close to 'Quetshadee and said in a low voice, albeit one that Zek could still hear, "And prepare a transport. I must return to the Fleet."

"The High Prophets _must_ be informed of what has transpired here."

* * *

1\. _Gökçen_ -class attack transport: the UNSC Air Force attack transport UNSC _Gerald Young_ has shown up before in _Missing in Action_ (chapter 1,) however I never identified the class. The _Gökçen_ -class attack transport is named after **Sabiha Gökçen,** who was a Turkish fighter pilot, and has been recognized by The Guinness Book of World Records to have been history's **first female fighter pilot**. To be clear, she isn't the first female combat pilot, but the first **fighter** pilot.


	34. Chapter 34

**Chapter 34**

 **Central Byzas, Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
2707**

 **Selene**

Selene slowly eased herself to the floor, doing her best not to jar her battered body too much. She was still black and blue from the subway station collapse, and probably would be for the next few weeks or so. With any luck though, it would only be a couple of days before she was out of this city and hopefully off the planet. Then she could be on her way to a refugee camp in some distant star system, where she would be safe.

And warm.

Shivering in the unheated building, Selene wrapped the blanket around her just a bit tighter, trying to trap as much of her body heat as she could. She kind of wished she could light a fire, but unfortunately, a fire would attract the wrong type of attention right now, and that was the last thing she needed. Plus, she didn't have any way of starting or sustaining a fire. No matches or kindling of any kind. But, at least she had this blanket. It still didn't sit right, her taking the blanket from the dead like that, but she couldn't deny she was a tiny bit glad Shin had forced her to do so.

The sound of the floorboards creaking just outside her room caused her to tense up, and she slowly reached into her blanket to grab hold of her sidearm. She kept herself from drawing it though, as she was pretty sure she knew who it was. Sure enough, Shin came strolling into the room, brushing the snow off his shoulders, and Selene allowed herself to relax.

"Well," he quietly declared, "I've done all I can to try and cover up our tracks, but our best bet is still going to be to wait a couple of hours for the snowfall to completely erase them. In the meantime, we should try and take this opportunity to try and get some rest."

"You sure there's no chance of a Covenant patrol stumbling across us?" Selene asked. "I don't know about you, but I'm not really in any condition to be running away from anyone right now."

"Well… if it's a chance you're asking about, there's _always_ a chance _someone_ might accidentally stumble across us," Shin allowed, "but let's be honest here: it's a rather _small_ chance. There are no signs outside that would indicate any humans are taking shelter in here, I made sure of that. And we're taking shelter inside one of the inner rooms, so all this concrete and brick will help mask us from most of the Covenant's sensors. Plus, that thermal blanket of yours will help trap your body heat in, preventing you from being easily spotted on thermal imaging cameras and… whatever."

Selene shivered again as she gripped the blanket even tighter at that thought. Yep, definitely glad Shin had made her take it.

"But what about you?" she asked, nodding her head at Shin's relatively uncovered body. "You don't have a blanket."

"Don't need one," Shin said with a shrug. He gave his sleeve a good tug. "Standard issued UNSC Air Force winter parka. Not only is it waterproof and more importantly, _warm,_ it already comes with a built-in infrared reflector. It's not perfect, but it has a similar effect to that blanket." He looked up and noticed the look of surprise on Selene's face. "How'd you think I was keeping warm this entire time?"

"Honestly, the thought hadn't really occurred to me," she admitted. "I just figured… well, I don't really know what I was thinking. I think I just figured you were really acclimated to the cold weather, which is why you weren't showing any signs of being cold."

"Well, that certainly didn't hurt," Shin vaguely replied before standing back up. "Anyways, I figured, all things considered, we should still probably keep an eye out, at least for the first hour or so, just to make sure we're completely off the grid. Figured that should be easy enough for me to deal with."

"Thanks," Selene said gratefully.

"For what?" Shin replied, looking genuinely confused.

"For giving me a chance to rest…?" Selene prompted.

"Oh… right. Yeah… uh, you're welcome," Shin awkwardly said with a shrug, and Selene did her best to hide her amusement. "Anyways, I'll be out in the hall for a little bit. Call me if you need anything. Only, if you do; try to, you know, keep it as quiet as you can."

"You know I'm not a complete idiot right?"

Shin gave a sheepish grin before heading for the door. Just before he walked out, he suddenly stopped.

"Oh, almost forgot," he declared as he walked back to her. Reaching into his vest, he pulled out a small bundle. "Got us some food. Figured I should go for the perishable stuff first so…" he opened the pack to reveal a couple of loaves of bread. "And of course, bread by itself sucks, so I got us some jam." Shin pulled out a small jar of jam from his pocket. "Hope you like strawberries."

"Even if I didn't, I'm certainly not in a position to complain about it," Selene pointed out as she grabbed the food. "Thank you."

Pulling out a slice from one of the loaves, she looked around for something to use to spread the jam, then paused. "Uh, Shin? I don't suppose you happened to grab like a butter knife or a spoon? You know, something to use to _spread_ the jam?"

Shin cocked his head and looked at her strangely. "Huh. I thought I was forgetting something," he began, but Selene did her best to quickly wave away any potential embarrassment he might have been feeling.

"Don't worry about it. You've certainly done more than your fair share of work today. I'll figure something out," she assured him. "And Shin?"

Shin glanced at her with an expectant look on his face.

"Thank you," Selene emphatically told him. "For everything you've done today. I don't think I would have made it this far without you."

Shin gave a half-shrug. "I'm sure you would have managed," he told her modestly. "But you're welcome. Anyways, try and get some sleep. We've got a long day tomorrow."

Selene nodded, and Shin quietly walked out of the room. As soon as he was gone, Selene regarded the bread sitting on the ground in front of her. Despite being in a city that had, at least up until this morning, been rather heavily populated, Selene wasn't sure how many scavenging opportunities they would have in the future, so she wanted to make sure their food lasted up until they got rescued.

Still, with that being said, Selene _was_ starving, so she grabbed a couple of slices, just so she would have something in her stomach. Ignoring the jam for the moment, she practically inhaled the two pieces. Once she was finished eating, Selene hurriedly wrapped up the rest of the loaves, both to save some for Shin and the road ahead, as well as to make sure she didn't go crazy and eat any more than she needed to.

With that task completed, Selene re-wrapped herself in her blanket and leaned her head against the back wall. Between her injuries and the general stress of the day, it didn't take her long to nod off. Just as her eyes closed and her breathing evened out, she noticed Shin quietly walking back into the room.

And just as the last vestiges of consciousness left her –

\- she happened to catch sight of the smirk that appeared on his face as he stared at her.

 **XXXXX**

 **O'Neill Air Force Base, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
2938**

 **Zelda**

" _Omega-6, you're cleared to land on runway three."_

Zelda keyed his microphone(1).

"Copy that Control Tower," he tiredly said. "Runway three. Omega-6, out."

Without another word, Zelda switched off his radio. Banking to the left, he steadily increased his speed until he was in line with the runway before pulling back on the throttle. As he made his approach, he made sure to lower his landing gear and extend all flaps to try and slow his speed even further. It wasn't easy to see the runway; obviously, in the middle of an invasion, the last thing the airbase wanted to do was light up their own position. So, in an effort to avoid giving away their own position, all of the runway lights had been extinguished, forcing Zelda to fly entirely by his sensors. It was alright though; Zelda was a professional pilot and despite how tired he was, he had landed his Broadsword safely many a time in similar conditions in the past, so he wasn't worried.

Watching on his HUD as he got lower and lower to the ground, Zelda began rounding out to increase his angle of descent while at the same time, pulling back on the throttle. At this point, he was maybe only a few meters off the ground, so he began to round out and mentally brace himself for touchdown, which happened just a few seconds later. His Broadsword shook and violently rattled as his landing gear finally made contact with the concrete runway, and Zelda hurriedly pulled back on the throttle and applied his brakes as he rocketed down the tarmac.

By the time Zelda had reached the end of the runway, his speed had been reduced to a crawl. A highlighted route instantly appeared on his HUD, directing him back to his hangar. As soon as it appeared, he began driving along the route, trying to get out of the way for the next Broadsword landing at that very moment.

Rolling past the various individual fighter hangars, Zelda tried not to stare at all the ones that he kenw would remain empty for tonight. Their losses had been… well, he didn't know how many pilots they had lost today, but he knew it was a lot. The loss of one pilot was always a tragedy but after today, it was practically a catastrophe. And this was just day one of the invasion. It would only get worse in the days to come.

Driving slightly passed his assigned hangar and coming to a complete stop, Zelda waited until the aircraft marshaller had gotten into position and began directing Zelda to back up. Focusing solely on the marshaller's instructions, Zelda backed his Broadsword up until the hangar walls had engulfed his fighter. It wasn't until the marshaller indicated for him to stop, and his fighter was secured, did Zelda reach out and power down his plane. The steady whine of his engines that had been filling his ears with background noise all day abruptly disappeared, leaving Zelda with a sense of emptiness.

Unhooking his oxygen and ripping off his helmet before he could suffocate, Zelda sat in his cockpit for a moment, trying to catch his breath. Outside, the ground crew were already swarming all over his fighter, trying to get some maintenance in before the fighting resumed tomorrow morning. But before they could do anything serious, they were going to need Zelda to get out so, with a reluctant sigh, Zelda punched the button that would open his canopy and unbuckled himself from his seat. Outside, he could hear his ladder extending. As it did, he reached out and tried to pull himself out from his cockpit, only to find that he couldn't move: his legs and lower back were too stiff.

Groaning, Zelda gave his thighs a good whack, trying to get the blood flowing again. How long had he been sitting in this cockpit? He couldn't even remember. He shot a glance at his mission run timer, hoping to find the reason behind his poor health.

…Holy fucking shit. He'd been up in the air for a little over twenty-four hours. No wonder he was so fucking stiff. That could not be healthy, sitting on his ass for that long of a time. Zelda had to admit, he had _never_ done _that_ in training.

With a loud, pain-filled grunt, Zelda forced himself to get up. Grateful for all the dips he had done while working out in the gym, Zelda planted his hands on either side of his cockpit and pushed himself up and out of his seat, allowing gravity to force his legs downwards and opening up his blood flow. Very awkwardly, he managed to get one leg out of the cockpit and onto the ladder, followed by his other leg. Then he slowly began making his way to the ground.

Somehow Zelda managed to accomplish the feat without stumbling or falling off the ladder. Once his feet were secure on the ground, Zelda tried to do some mini hops, to fully restore the blood flow to the rest of his limbs, but damn if it didn't feel like he was wearing boots made out of concrete right now.

Giving it up as a bad job, Zelda did his best to drag himself over to the door that would lead back to his squadron's briefing room.

"Lieutenant, sir?"

Zelda didn't even bother trying to hide the irritated look on his face as he looked up at the security forces officer standing guard by the door. The guard didn't look perturbed though.

"Your sidearm, sir," the guard said, pointing at the pistol Zelda had strapped in a shoulder holster.

Zelda stared at the man incomprehensively, before the guard pointed at a weapon unloading station sitting nearby. Zelda couldn't help but scoff. Loaded weapons were not allowed on base outside of the hangar and runway area; but he would have thought that in the middle of an alien invasion, that rule would have been suspended. Apparently it hadn't been. Fucking Air Force.

Pulling out his sidearm, Zelda stuck the barrel into the cylinder tube that made up the unloading station, ejected the magazine and racked the slide to eject the round within the chamber. Once that was done, he dry fired his pistol to make sure it was actually cleared, before sticking both the magazine and his now empty sidearm back in their respective holsters. He didn't bother trying to recover the round he had ejected from the chamber as he was pretty sure if he tried to bend over, he would fall over and not be able to get back up.

Once that was done, the guard finally allowed him onto the base, and Zelda limped over to his squadron's ready room, where what remained of his squadron was gathering.

The room felt strangely large, both because at this point Zelda had gotten used to the confined space of his cockpit, and because there was hardly anyone left. Half the squadron had gone down today, leaving the rest trying to figure out what to do and how to feel. No one said anything, as everyone was simply too tired, both physically and mentally, to try and decide what to say.

Zelda looked up as Bellum stumbled into the room. She looked about as bad as Zelda felt, if not worse. Even in the dim light, he could see her eyes were bloodshot, as if she had been crying. But when she spoke, her voice was as strong as ever.

"Good flying today," was all she said. "We've been pulled off flight status for the moment. Unfortunately, we can't leave the area, but we're going to have some food and water delivered to us, so try and relax. Don't worry about anything, we'll figure it all out tomorrow. Tonight, just… try and unwind."

Zelda nodded in acknowledgement, too tired to try and do anything else.

wwwweeeeeee _rrrrrrrrnnnn_ NNNNN **NNNNNNNNNNNNNNN** _ **NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!**_

Zelda looked up sharply at the sound of the air raid siren going off, followed by the thumping of anti-aircraft artillery. Over the chaos of explosions, he could hear the whine of Covenant anti-gravity engines, as well as the familiar static of plasma weapons discharging. With a weary sigh, Zelda reluctantly climbed to his feet, but Bellum was quick to stop him.

"Don't worry about that people!" she sharply said. "That's not our problem. Base has got its own anti-air defenses, and there are other squadrons to deal with that crap. Settle down. Stay indoors though; these buildings are reinforced and unless we take a direct hit, we should be fine from any airstrikes. Just… try and get some sleep."

"If you can," she added as there was a particularly vicious explosion from outside.

Zelda nodded. Without saying a word, he got up and walked to the nearest corner of the room to stake out a spot, and threw himself on the ground. Exhaustion almost immediately overtook him, and he felt his eyes closing.

He fell asleep to the sound of the pitched air battle raging only a couple hundred meters away.

 **XXXXX**

 **Staging Area, Outskirts of Newington, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
3129**

 **Tariq**

 _"Okay driver, and... halt!"_

Tariq lurched forward as Lillian jerked to a halt. Without a word, Tariq watched as Corona reached out and switched the ignition off, killing the tank. For a long moment, all occupants of the vehicle just sat there, enjoying the silence.

The silence was broken when Noble finally reached up and unbuckled her harness. Popping open the hatch above her, she climbed up and disappeared outside. After a few moments, Tariq decided to join her. Unbuckling his own harness, he made sure to grab his SMG, before shimmying out of his seat and climbing out of the hatch. Noble was already gone. Where to, Tariq had no idea; truth be told, he didn't really care either

Upon emerging, the first thing Tariq did was pull out a cigarette and light it. Taking a deep drag, Tariq held his breath, letting the cigarette smoke swirl around in his lungs in an attempt to warm up his core before slowly exhaling. He did this a couple more times as he watched the rest of the battalion come trickling in.

With the entirety of the 7th Cavalry Division now officially online, and with the vanguard of the 80th Rifle Division coming in, 2nd Brigade of the UNSC Army's 53rd Armored Division had officially been relieved for the night and moved into the Corps' reserve. It had been one hell of a long day, and Tariq was looking forward to getting some actual rest.

There was a mute _clang_ as Corona popped open his hatch and decided to join the rest of the crew outside. Climbing out, Tariq watched as he started stretching, before glancing up at Tariq.

"God. I was starting to feel like I was glued to that seat," he noted.

Tariq shrugged, but didn't say anything. What was there to even say?

Even in the dim light, Tariq could see Corona looked somewhat disappointed, but he rallied quickly. Climbing up to the top of the tank, much to Tariq's annoyance, Corona popped down on the turret right next to him, either not noticing or not caring about the patch of snow he had just plopped down on. Tariq briefly considered moving, but then decided he was too tired to bother. He waited for Corona to say something.

"Think I could bum a cigarette from you?" Corona abruptly asked.

Tariq couldn't help but give Corona an odd look even as he extracted a cigarette from his pack and handed it over to him.

"Didn't know you smoked," he couldn't help but comment.

"I do. But only on rare occasions. And usually not cigarettes. I'm a cigar guy. It's the taste, you see," Corona explained. "Can't stand the taste of cigarettes. Unfortunately, I didn't bring any cigars with me 'cause I figured we were just going out on a field exercise. Didn't expect to actually fight off a full-fledged Covenant invasion."

"Thanks," he added as Tariq pulled out a lighter and helped light Corona's cigarette.

"Well, that's the problem, ain't it?" Tariq noted as he stashed his stuff away. "No one expects a Covenant invasion because even this late in the war, we still can't predict when or where an invasion will occur. So we never have any time to prepare. Just gotta make do with what we've got."

Corona bobbed his head and fell silent. For a moment, the two of them just sat there, letting their cigarettes burn down as they enjoyed the silence.

Finally, Corona spoke up.

"Man, I am going to sleep like a baby tonight," he said with a groan as he stretched his arms. Tariq let out a humorless chuckle.

"Sleep? What's that?"

Corona started to laugh, but then quickly stopped upon noticing the serious expression on Tariq's face. "You serious? We just got pulled off the line. I thought that meant we would be able to get some rest."

Tariq let out a derisive snort. "Yeah. 'Rest.' Sure, we'll get some rest alright. After we finish getting Lillian ready and prepared for the fight tomorrow."

"What?" Tariq added upon noticing the surprised expression on Corona's face. "You thought just because we managed to hold back the Covenant today, somehow the Covies were just going to throw in the flag? Admit defeat? Withdraw?"

"No, of course not," Corona hastily said. "I just..."

He trailed off as Tariq shook his head.

"Covies ain't done with this world yet kid. They got a taste of what sort of resistance we can offer. Probed our defenses. Measured our response times. And sapped a lot of our strength today. That way, when they come back tomorrow, they'll have a much better idea of what to expect. You see, that's what the Covenant do. Once the Covies smell blood in the water, they will not relent. They will attack, and continue attacking until either they're all dead, or all opposition has been subdued. The real question here is: can we provide the same measure of resistance we did today, tomorrow? And the only way to answer _that_ , is to make sure all equipment, especially our vehicles, are in tiptop shape, ready for another dozen rounds. And we don't rest until that happens. Got it?"

Corona mutely nodded.

"Good. And don't ever forget that," Tariq insisted as he looked up in time to see Noble returning.

"I'm arranging for more fuel and ammo to be delivered to this area for us," Noble immediately reported without preamble. "When it arrives, make sure we're stocked up and topped off and ready for the tomorrow, Sergeant."

Tariq nodded.

"I've also got the platoon commanders and all tank commanders creating a list of replacement parts they're going to need to bring their vehicles back up to speed," Noble continued. "I want a similar list from you and Private Corona in my hands in the next twenty minutes. I don't care what it is: whether it be new tracks, barrels for a coax, or even an entirely new transmission, put it on the list. Just... let me know which items are critical. Got it?"

"Yes, First Sergeant," Tariq warily replied. Noble nodded in approval.

"Also: let's get whatever maintenance that can be done on this vehicle. As I'm sure Sergeant Helmand can testify, within the next few coming days, we're going to have less and less opportunities to conduct preventive maintenance. So, whatever can be done tonight, do it. Mechanics will be here, in and out, to help out."

Noble trailed off and looked around, as if she was trying to figure out if she had forgotten anything. Evidently she hadn't as she finally said, "Any questions?"

"No, First Sergeant," Corona immediately replied, but Tariq actually did have a question, so he raised his hand.

"Sergeant Helmand?"

"First Sergeant," Tariq began, "do we have any word on how the rest of our division has fared in this fight in terms of casualties? Especially those brigades that had been stationed north of the Covenant drop zone."

"You have friends in those brigades?" Noble gently asked and Tariq nodded. Noble sighed.

"Unfortunately, all communications with divisional headquarters was officially severed four hours ago, Sergeant," Noble answered. "2nd Brigade has been reporting directly to XIV Armored Corps HQ the last few hours so unfortunately, no, I have no idea how the rest of the division is faring."

"However," she added, "give me about an hour and I can probably get you an up-to-date casualty list if that will work for you."

Tariq shrugged, then nodded. Probably the best he could hope for honestly.

"Anyway, I got to make some calls," Noble finished. "I'll be back in twenty minutes to get that list. So get it done you two."

"You can depend on us, First Sergeant," Corona tiredly replied.

Noble nodded, and then turned around and walked away.

Tariq watched her go for a moment, taking one last drag from his cigarette, before flicking the butt away.

"Well, no sense in standing on ceremony," Tariq declared.

"Let's get this shit done."

 **XXXXX**

 **Camp Hoxha, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
3309**

 **Marcus**

The HEMTT abruptly lurched, causing Marcus to jerk awake. He automatically grabbed his rifle and began looking around for the cause, only to see Dresden lifting a hand in a placating gesture.

"Take it easy Marcus," he said from his spot in the driver's seat. "It was just a small crater in the middle of the road. That's all."

Marcus nodded his head in acknowledgement and lowered his rifle, but he couldn't quite force himself to relax. Between all the contested supply runs this morning, the sporadic artillery strikes and the randomized air raids, Marcus found he was wound pretty tightly. He was honestly surprised he had fallen asleep like that, a possibility he attributed to the fact that he was completely and utterly wiped.

Their last mission had been to deliver a bunch of artillery shells to an artillery unit from the 7th Cav that had recently arrived, upon which, word came down they were to return to base to shut down for the night. Marcus and his team had needed no further prompting and upon piling into their HEMTT, Dresden had taken one look at Marcus before declaring he was going to drive. With no energy to protest, Marcus had willingly ceded the driver's seat, swapping places with Dresden.

Pulling out from the artillery yard, they joined a convoy of vehicles, all traveling in the same direction for safety reasons, and that was probably about the time Marcus had passed out as he couldn't remember anything after that.

"Tired Marcus?" Dresden asked as Marcus let out a large yawn.

"Yes, sir," Marcus mumbled. "I don't think I've ever worked as hard in my life before as I did today. I've got muscles that are sore that I didn't even _realize_ were muscles."

Dresden let out an appreciative chuckle. "Yeah. Well, when we get back to base, see if you can't take a hot bath or something. Relax some of those muscles and get the blood flowing once more."

"Fuck a bath man," Orlović suddenly said from the back of the cab where he was awkwardly sprawled out on a bunch of empty ammo cans. "As soon as we get back to base, I'm going straight to bed. Not even going to take off my clothes or nothing."

Dresden frowned. "Well, if you want to sleep right away, that's fine, just make sure you switch into a clean pair of clothes first. Our uniforms are soaked; last thing you want is to accidentally get hypothermia."

Marcus had to admit, getting sick didn't sound too bad to him. Then again, he supposed the Army wasn't exactly like high school: he didn't get sick days. And if he had to be running around doing the same stuff he had done today, then he would rather _not_ be sick.

"Also want to make sure you get some food and water in your system," Dresden was saying. "At least something more substantial than energy drinks."

"Man, you're starting to sound like my mother," Orlović grumbled good-naturally. "'You gotta eat dinner Billy! Can't survive on a diet of energy drinks and coffee!'"

"Well, she's not wrong. Plus, she's not here so, for all intents and purposes, I _am_ your mother," Dresden replied with a grin.

Upon mentioned of people's mothers, Marcus abruptly thought of his own, along with the rest of his family living in Astoria; on the other side of the Euxine Ocean. He was a bit ashamed to admit that he hadn't really thought much, if at all, about them. Though, in his defense, he _was_ very distracted throughout the day. But still. His parents were probably worried sick about him as they undoubtedly must have realized that the Covenant had set foot not too far from where his first duty station had been. His dad was no doubt sitting in his favorite leather chair in the living room, eyes glued on the TV, watching every update the news stations were giving about the progress of the invasion; while his mother was probably running around the house, cleaning and baking; as she always did whenever she got agitated.

Thinking of his parents suddenly made Marcus _very_ homesick, and he resolved that the moment they got back to base, he was running upstairs to his dorm room and digging out his phone so he could give his parents a call. Assuming they hadn't been evacuated off the planet yet. And assuming the phone network was even working, of course.

"Well, here we are gentlemen," Dresden declared as he pulled into the base. "Home sweet home."

Marcus couldn't help but let out a silent cheer as they pulled through the base gates. Camp Hoxha. Somehow looking no worse for wear despite everything that had happened today.

He waited silently as Dresden drove across the base before pulling to a stop in front of a series of brick buildings.

"First stop: the dorm rooms," Dresden declared as he threw the HEMTT into park. "Make sure you guys gather up all your things: management is not responsible for any lost items."

Marcus let out an appreciative chuckle as he hopped out of the cab, holding the door open so that Orlović could exit. Just before shutting the door though, Dresden caught his attention.

"Marcus, you remember where we're going?"

Marcus looked around but unfortunately, this many hours later, he couldn't distinguish up from down. He shook his head.

"Well, you're sharing a dorm room with Orlović, so follow him," Dresden ordered. "He knows where he's going."

"Wait, _you're_ my new roommate?" Orlović suddenly demanded.

Startled, all Marcus could do was nod.

"Damn," Orlović swore. "I was enjoying having the entire room to myself. Knew it was too good to last. Fuck. Well, whatever. Come on dude, I'll show you the way."

Cautiously nodding, Marcus grabbed his rifle, and started to follow in Orlović's wake, then stopped when he realized Dresden wasn't following.

"Wait," he said. "Sarge? Aren't you coming?"

"Well, first off, I don't live on base with the rest of you kids. See, I'm a grown-up and I live in a grown-up place," Dresden proudly declared, though Marcus could pick up the hint of sarcasm in Dresden's voice. "And secondly, I can't rest yet. I got to get this thing ready for tomorrow morning."

Marcus stared at him, incredulously. "What exactly needs to be worked on, sir?"

"Well, for one thing, the tires on the driver's side need to be replaced," Dresden reminded him. "They don't replace themselves you know. Plus, there's some preventative maintenance crap I'd like to get done before turning in tonight."

"You going to need our help, Theo?" Orlović asked from behind Marcus.

Dresden waved his hand dismissively. "Nah. Worse comes to worst, there should be a bunch of mechanics working late. I'll get them to help out."

Marcus and Orlović exchanged a look before they both simultaneously sighed. Marcus slung his rifle over his shoulder before starting to mount the bottom step to the cab.

"What are you guys doing?"

"We're coming with," Orlović tiredly replied.

"No you're not."

"Yes, we are," Marcus reluctantly replied. "Not going to be able to do all this by yourself."

Dresden quickly shook his head. "Seriously guys, I'm fine. _You two_ need some sleep though."

"So do you, sir," Marcus pointed out.

"Not really. Guys, I've done this before. This ain't my first Covenant invasion you know," Dresden drily informed them. "I know what I'm doing. I'll be fine. I can handle all this by myself, but I can't do the rest of my job if you two are about ready to collapse. So, go get some sleep. Both of you. Don't make me order you guys."

Marcus hesitated at the sincerity in Dresden's voice. There was no denying: Marcus was really tired and the last thing he wanted to do was more work. At the same time though, he couldn't help but feel guilty.

"You sure, sir?" he finally said.

"Absolutely."

"Well... okay then," Orlović finally replied. "But the moment you need something, you call us right away, got it?"

Dresden looked amused. "Will do Billy."

Orlović nodded.

"Okay then," Orlović repeated. "Guess we'll see you in a couple hours, huh?"

"Yep. Night guys."

With that, Dresden shut the door and drove back in the direction of the motor pool. Marcus watched him leave for a moment, before Orlović slapped him on his shoulder.

"He'll be fine," he declared. "Come on; I'll show you the room."

Marcus silently plodded in Orlović's wake as he led them inside the building, up the stairs, and into the room that had been assigned to them. It was almost identical to the way Marcus had left it nearly a day ago. His duffle bag was still sitting on top of an unmade bed with a pile of linen lying right next to it. It almost seemed like a lifetime ago when Dresden was first showing him the room.

"Bathroom and showers are down the hall," Orlović announced. "Left, outside the door. I doubt the mess hall is open, but I got some crackers and shit for when I get hungry at night. You can have some."

Marcus grunted his thanks. Now that he was in such close proximity to a bed, it was taking everything he had to stay on his feet.

"Going to hit the head," Orlović announced. "Try not to make a mess, okay?"

Without another word, he left the room, leaving Marcus alone.

Without really thinking, Marcus stumbled to his assigned bed, intent on at least laying out the sheets. As soon as he sat down, however, he found his eyelids were all but impossible to keep open.

Rather than try to fight the feeling, Marcus went ahead and allowed the sweet embrace of sleep to envelop him. And as it did, he did his best to avoid dreaming about all the horrors he had seen -

\- and all the horrors he had _yet_ to see.

 **XXXXX**

 **Northern Byzas, Thracia Province, Actium  
May 6, 2545  
3512**

 **Adel**

Carefully, as to not make too much noise, Adel slowly unwrapped his MRE and took a bite. Chewing, he suddenly frowned.

"What the hell…?" he muttered. "This shit taste like chicken."

"So… what's the problem?" X asked from beside him.

"It's supposed to be mac and cheese…"

He could hear X snorting. "Well, _that's_ just typical."

There was a long stretch of silence and then –

"Wait, are you still eating that?"

Adel paused mid-bite. "Am… am I not supposed to?" he sheepishly asked.

Even through his night vision goggles, Adel could see X staring at him with an incredulous expression on his face.

"Well… I personally wouldn't have," X admitted. "Generally, if I eat something that doesn't taste like what it says it's supposed to be, I figure it's got to be for one of two reasons: it was labelled incorrectly… or it's gone really _really_ bad. And… I don't know about you, but… this is probably the last place I would want to get the runs. So… yeah…?"

Feeling slightly sick now, Adel carefully leaned out of their hole and spat out whatever food was in his mouth before tossing the MRE away.

"That's… a good point," Adel admitted. "Well. Shit."

"Try drinking a lot of water," X suggested. "Might help flush out whatever's already in your system. Not saying whatever you were eating was _bad_ , just… well, I wouldn't have risked it."

Feeling extremely foolish now, Adel nevertheless did what he was told. Grabbing the straw to his hydration pack, he began to quickly suck down as much water as he could. For a moment, there was nothing but silence.

"Brass!"

"Dragon!" Adel immediately hissed back. He turned around as Sam quietly slide into the hole beside them.

"Got ammo and rockets," he reported, and Adel quickly grabbed the rockets and stashed them to the side. "How's it going out here?"

"It's all quiet on the western front Corporal," X reported. Sam grunted.

"Good."

Adel looked up, confused. "I thought we were on the northern front?"

He could hear both X and Sam sighing.

"Dude… just stop," he heard X say, sounding highly exasperated.

"What?" Adel retorted, feeling slightly defensive. "We are, aren't we?"

"And he wonders why everyone thinks all Marines are dumb fucks," Sam muttered.

"Fuck you guys," Adel retorted, though without any real heat. "Seriously. I don't get it."

He could see Sam shaking his head. "We'll tell you when you're older."

Adel was just about to retort, when he noticed a single dot appearing on his IFF tracker slowly approaching their position, only instead of coming from behind, it was coming from directly in front of them.

Adel frowned. He knew Command had sent out a couple of reconnaissance patrols a bit earlier to see if they could get some intel on the Covenant defensive positions, but if they were coming back already, there should have been more than one of them, plus, they would have radioed ahead. He glanced at Sam and X, to see if they had noticed, only to see they were already reaching for their weapons. He quickly followed suit, grabbing his rifle and levelling it.

"You guys ready?" Sam whispered, and Adel slowly nodded. "Hang on." He cleared his throat.

"Brass!" Sam called out in a loud whisper. For a moment, there was no noise, and Adel felt himself tensing up. "Brass!"

"Knuckle!" someone called back in a surprisingly human-sounding voice.

Adel promptly pulled the trigger.

 _BANGBANGBANG!_

The gunshots echoed down the street, shattering the silence that had fallen upon the area like an explosion. For a moment, there was no response. Then –

 _FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ!_

Green plasma bolts lanced out from the darkness, splashing against the road in front of Adel's hole and causing him to flinch. Without waiting for the barrage to end, he laid into the trigger, emptying his magazine in the direction most of the fire was coming from.

"CONTACT! All call signs, this is OP three, be advised, we have been engaged!" Adel heard Sam screaming into the radio to be heard over the increasing sound of gunshots and plasma fire. "Flare! X, give me a flare!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Adel could see X tossing his rifle to the ground and hurriedly pulling out a pen flare. Angling it upwards, he fired, sending a flare flying straight into the air. Almost immediately, the area was flooded with infrared light that could only be seen through night vision devices. Looking downrange, Adel spotted a small patrol of Covenant soldiers, consisting of probably four or five Grunts and at least two Skirmishers. They were trying to cut their way through the concertina wire the engineers had laid out earlier this evening for this very reason.

"COVIES IN THE WIRE!" Adel bellowed.

"Hit 'em with a rocket!"

Adel hastily abandoned his rifle and made his way to X's side as X planted the Jackhammer onto his shoulder. The rocket launcher was already loaded and ready for action, so all Adel had to do was check to make sure the backblast area was all cleared.

"Backblast area all secured!"

"ROCKET!"

Adel flinched as the rocket launcher was fired, and he looked over his shoulder in time to see the rocket exploding in the midst of the entire Covenant patrol, knocking them all to the ground and causing them to disappear behind a cloud of dust and smoke. At once, all gunfire ceased.

"Cease fire!" Sam yelled, probably out of habit as no one was firing any longer.

Abandoning the Jackhammer, Adel grabbed his rifle and levelled it downrange, searching for more movement. Unfortunately, the flare chose that very moment to burn out, causing darkness to settle over the area once more.

"Did we get them all?" Adel couldn't help but ask. He hastily switched his goggles over to the thermal setting, but the area where the Covenant were lying was awash with heat from the rocket explosion, making it extremely difficult to make out individual figures.

Before anyone could response –

"Brass!"

"Dragon!" Sam hissed, and Adel reflexively turned around to see Reynolds, with two more Marines in tow, running towards them.

"Y'all alright? What happened?" Reynolds demanded to know in a low whisper.

"Covie reconnaissance patrol in the wire, Staff Sergeant," Sam explained. "I think we got them all though."

Movement out of the corner of Adel's eye caught his attention, and he whirled around to see something moving downrange. He reflexively fired a couple of shots, and he looked a bit closer to see the figure of a Covenant Skirmisher, possibly the leader of the patrol, collapsing to the ground.

" _Now_ we got them all," Adel reported.

"Good shot Private," Reynolds complimented. "And good work y'all. Keep your eyes open, and don't be leaving yer holes tonight. Looks like y'all got a handle on things, so I'm gonna report back to the Skipper."

"Aye aye, Staff Sergeant," Sam said.

"You two, let's go," Reynolds barked, looking at the two other Marines with him, and the three of them quickly bounded back in the direction of the CP; leaving Adel and the others sitting there, shaking from the adrenaline.

"Holy shit," Adel muttered as he reloaded.

"No kidding," X replied.

For a few moments, there was nothing but silence, aside from a slight tapping noise as Adel drummed his fingers against his rifle, doing his best to try and calm down. Then –

"Hey Savaschi."

"What?" Adel said, glancing in Sam's direction.

"I think that was your first kill man," Sam told him.

"Was it?" Adel mentally reviewed everything that had happened to him that day and concluded Sam was right. "Huh. I guess you're right."

"Good work Marine."

Adel bobbed his head in agreement. His first kill. He'd been looking forward to this moment since his first day in boot camp. Hell, maybe even before that, when he was but a little kid.

But now that the moment was here, Adel found he could take no joy in. No pleasure. For years, he thought he would have been super excited about obtaining his first kill but now? All he felt was a sense of emptiness. Regret, almost. And he wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.

He spent the rest of the night doing his best to keep his eye on the line while pondering that very question.

 **XXXXX**

 _ **Heliopolis Station,**_ **High Orbit, Actium  
May 7, 2545  
0001**

 **Spaatz**

Spaatz stood in front of the viewport on the observation deck, with his hands clasped behind his back. Technically, his presence here on the _Heliopolis'_ observation deck in the midst of a Covenant invasion was a direct violation of severalUNSC Navy protocols. After all, it _was_ the most vulnerable place on the entire station.

Spaatz didn't care. He needed to see it.

The planet.

Actium.

He needed to see it with his own eyes, and not through a view screen. He needed to see what he had done.

And think.

About how he was going to save it.

As per protocol, all artificial lights on the surface of the planet had been turned off. Not that the darkness was capable of fooling the Covenant sensors, but, every little bit helped. As a result, the entire surface of the colony of Actium was completely dark.

Except for one single spot.

The city of Byzas. And the site of the Covenant beachhead.

"Sir."

Spaatz didn't so much as twitch at the sound of Kanin's voice from behind him, but Kanin knew he was listening nonetheless.

"Sir, according to sensors, all Covenant activity has ceased for the moment," Kanin announced. "All Covenant offensive activity has been temporarily halted. It would appear, sir, that the Covenant are assuming defensive positions."

Spaatz cleared his throat. "And what of the Spartans?"

"The surviving member of Spartan Team Argon has been safely transported out of the system. As per the Cole Protocol, the UNSC _Sonata_ will make over a dozen randomized slipstream jumps before arriving on Reach."

"And the surviving soldier from Volkov's Airborne detachment?"

"Sergeant Moss Shen is currently in a coma, sir. According to the medical team, they are unable to estimate at what point, if ever, he will reawaken."

Spaatz sighed and rubbed his face. "So we still don't know what happened to the remaining members of Argon Team? Or the fate of Major Volkov and the rest of his detachment?"

"…No, sir. However, Captain Rogers and the rest of his company of Rangers are still searching for clues."

"Call it off."

"Sir?"

"Recall those soldiers. At this point, the Covenant would have had spent as much time as we have searching for those Spartans. If they had found something, we would have heard about it by now. And if neither party can find anything, then we can conclude that it is because there is simply nothing left to find."

Kanin was silent for a moment.

"For the record, sir, I don't believe Admiral Parangosky would approve," he finally said.

"I don't give a damn _what_ Admiral Parangosky would approve of or not approve of," Spaatz snapped, turning to face Kanin. " _ **I'm**_ in charge of the defense of this system, and if she doesn't like that, then she can come here and relieve me herself. And _until_ that moment happens, I'm not wasting any more of my troops on a fruitless search. Is that clear?"

"Sir. Yes, sir."

"Good." Spaatz turned back to the viewport. In its reflection, he could see Kanin's avatar had yet to disappear. "Was there something else?"

"Just one more thing, sir. SIGINT has picked up a tightly concentrated communication's signal originating from the Covenant invasion force's flagship. It appears to be directed somewhere outside of the system. We're not capable of tracking its destination. The message is, however, heavily, _heavily_ encrypted. ONI's preliminary analysis suggests that it will take, at the very _minimum_ , a decade of non-stop calculations and analysis before we're capable of cracking the code."

"We don't need to crack the code: I know exactly what it says."

"Sir?"

"It's a request," Spaatz explained. "For reinforcements. The Covenant have a foothold. And they will _not_ surrender it easily. We need to drive them out. Now. While the balance of power still remains stacked in our direction." Spaatz let out another sigh before fully turning around. "Call a briefing. All general officers and their staff from all Commands. Do it, and do it now Kanin."

"Sir…" Kanin slowly began, "with all due respect, you need some sleep. You've been on your feet since before the invasion began, and you've had nothing for sustenance besides coffee. At this point, sir, and to be blunt, you're running at less than optimal efficiency. And should you fall due to poor health, sir, the disruption to the chain of command could prove to be… catastrophic."

Spaatz took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. As much as he didn't want to admit it, Kanin was right. As any rescue worker knew, they had to ensure they were capable of saving themselves before they tried to save anyone else.

"Fine," he finally said. "Schedule the briefing for zero three hundred hours. No later. The sooner we can go on the offensive, the better; because tomorrow…"

Spaatz glanced over his shoulder at Actium once more.

"…Tomorrow is going to be another _very_ long day."


	35. Chapter 35: Interlude - Bad News

Thanks to everyone who left a review last chapter, specifically CommissarBS, Hein117 (I'm honored to be your first reviewee!) and Broman! I really appreciate it! Your support and your comments really help me in my attempts to write these stories, and I hope I'm able to maintain this level of quality all of you have come to expect in the future.

A quick response to Broman as he asked a question that I think some other readers might have wondered about.

Lancelot had his men remove their helmets for a couple of reasons: noise discipline, as you guessed, but also due to weight (they were trying to be stealthy so the less they had to carry, the less they had to worry about,) and better situational awareness (as now they don't have this heavy thing sitting on their heads potentially distracting them.) The last reason is especially important as CH252 helmets in canon are depicted as having integrated earmuffs and while I don't doubt they are electronic earmuffs, there's still the chance they could muffle the sound of say, the footsteps of an Elite sneaking on them (not, that it helped very much, as depicted in the chapter.)

* * *

 **Chapter 35: Interlude**

" _ **Bad News"**_

 **Covenant** _ **ORS-class**_ **"Undying Fealty"  
Forerunner Designated World: MS 222-53 a  
9th Age of Reclamation  
12th Cycle of the Planet's Rotation**

 **Shipmaster Iam 'Oteree**

Shipmaster Iam 'Oteree stood up as straight as he could while he waited for the connection to form. His armor gleamed under the light, having just been thoroughly washed and polished, to remove all traces of the mud and snow from the planet he had just left. Crawling with humans and all of their _filth_ , the planet alone had almost been enough to make Iam shudder, and under no circumstances would he allow the Noble Hierarchs to suffer from the same discomfort, even if it would be nothing more than an image. Anything that would perhaps convince them to grant him leniency.

There was no other way to put it: Iam had failed the High Prophets. Badly failed. They had entrusted him the safety of one of their kind and yet, despite his best efforts, the Minister of Contentment had been murdered by the thrice cursed humans. The first San'shyuum killed in the Crusade against the humans ever. The first San'shyuum killed on the battlefield in... eons. And it was not even a Demon who had slain the Minister, but a mere _human_.

Damn that 'Refumee! If only he had had done his duty and remained at his post!

Iam took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.

No, 'Refumee had been dealt with already, and as much as Iam would have liked to place the entirety of the blame at the young fool's feet, Iam knew the High Prophets would never tolerate such...sniveling. For, not only was Iam a Zealot, he was also a Fleetmaster. And as such, any actions undertaken by the warriors under his command were his responsibility and his alone. He would face the consequences of his failures with the honor and dignity all members of House 'Oteree were expected to show.

Breath. Tranquility. Iam was a veteran of many a campaign. A master warrior. An expert in his craft. He would show no fear, for he was blessed by the Gods themselves and anointed by the Holy Prophets. With such righteous power guiding his every action, how could Iam fear any evildoers?

His communicator abruptly chimed, indicating a connection had been established, and Iam immediately prostrated himself as the images of the three most Noble and most Holy members of the Covenant appeared before him: the Hierarchs of the Covenant, the High Prophets of Regret, Mercy, and Truth.

"Noble Hierarchs," Iam rumbled without looking up. "In the name of the Ancestors, I greet you. May the Divine Wind carry you swiftly on your Great Journey. May you be blessed with the responsibilities of the great Mantle. Hail to the High Prophets! Hallowed are Thee who Lead the Way!"

Clearing his throat, Iam bowed even lower. "The Noble Hierarchs are both merciful and generous to honor me with their presence, for this one is not worthy of even breathing near your Most Prestigious beings."

With the formal greetings concluded, Iam waited for the Hierarchs to speak.

 _"Commander."_

The Prophet of Truth's gravelly voice seemed to echo through the chamber, and Iam felt a shiver of joy travel down his spine at the sound, however his joy was quickly tempered when he remembered the reasoning for this conference.

 _"You may rise."_

Gratefully, and somewhat awkwardly, Iam rose to his feet as he resisted the urge to massage his knees. The biology of the Sangheili did not quite allow them to prostrate themselves in such a manner, however, wicked be thee who dared fail to pay the proper tribute to the High Prophets.

 _"Commander,"_ Truth continued as Iam recovered. _"You are one of our most faithful servants, and have served the Covenant with great loyalty through the eons. It thus arrived with great shock and sadness when the reports arose that a member of our kind, a holy San'shyuum and one of the Great Ministers of the High Council, was brutally slain while under_ your _protection."_

Iam could not help but wince at that.

 _"However, Commander,"_ Truth continued, _"the High Prophets realize the lies of the heretics are boundless and unrelenting. Therefore, we, the Noble Hierarchs, invite you to elucidate the events that transpired during your campaign, in that, the Noble Hierarchs may thus know the truth of the matter."_

Iam avoided the urge to grimace. What he had to say would surely not be well received.

Sure enough, as Iam recalled the events that had transpired on the planet but a few cycles ago to the High Prophets, he could see Truth's face become more and more drawn. By the time Iam had completed his report, Truth's face almost appeared to have been constructed of stone.

" _So,"_ Truth began, silencing everyone else in the room. _"In conclusion, Commander, not only did you fail to capture any of the Demons you were tasked with recovery, you also failed to capture the human who murdered our dear Minister. Our Minister, of whom_ we _, entrusted_ you _, with protecting. Would you agree, Commander, that this is an accurate synopsis?"_

Iam closed his eyes and lowered his eyes in shame. There was no denying.

"Yes, your Hierarch," he said. "It is as you say. I have failed you."

There was a long moment of silence, but Iam dare not rise to discover why.

 _"We are very disappointed,"_ Truth finally said and somehow, that single sentence made Iam feel _ashamed_ of himself.

"Yes, your Hierarch," he miserably repeated. "There is no excuse for my failures. I can only prostrate myself in front of the Hierarchy and beg for an opportunity to redeem myself for this transgression."

" _And what would you have us do?"_ Mercy asked, speaking up for the first time.

Iam slowly inhaled. He was not sure if there was a particular answer the High Prophets hoped to receive, but for Iam, there was but one recourse left for him.

"Please, allow me to continue my campaign against the humans and I will make sure their pathetic world burns in your name."

Iam did his best not to sound as if he was pleading, however there was no denying: the fate of his honor rested in the hands of the Hierarchs. He could only pray they would be merciful.

There was a long stretch of silence where no one spoke, during which, Iam became increasingly nervous. Surely the Hierarchs understood his position? Surely they would be merciful? However, none of the Prophets showed any signs of their thoughts, disapproving or otherwise.

The silence continued, and just as Iam was about to break protocol and plead for mercy once more, Truth abruptly spoke.

" _The Hierarchy has heard your plea,"_ he declared. _"And will now consider your fate."_

The High Prophets abruptly vanished as the transmission was terminated.

As soon as Iam confirmed the transmission had ended, he released the breath he had been holding. At this moment, he could do naught but wait. Wait for the Gods to determine his fate.

As time trickled past, Iam did his best to remain calm. The High Prophets were as merciful as they were wise; surely they would grant him his request.

...but if they were not...? What would become of him then?

Most certainly he would be branded a heretic and forced into exile, if not outright executed. His name would be stripped from his House's saga wall and his clan forever shamed.

No! That could not happen! Iam could not allow it! Surely there would be another way for him to regain his lost honor!?

...how so?

...perhaps as an _Arbiter_ -

Iam laughed out loud. It was a sad, bitter laugh, for Iam knew the truth: there had already been an Arbiter during this Age. The High Prophets would surely refuse to allow a second. No, Iam's fate would be that of death at best, a heretical brand at worse.

...of course, that were to only be true if the High Prophets were less than merciful.

But surely the High Prophets were as merciful as they were wise!?

The communicator suddenly let out a loud charm, stopping Iam before he could repeat his mental argument. Taking a moment to straighten himself, Iam inhaled, and then slowly exhaled, before receiving the transmission.

The images of the High Prophets appeared once again before him and just before Iam prostrated himself, he stole a glance at the faces of the Hierarchs, hoping to gleam a clue as to his fate. None of them, however, showed any signs of their deliberation, and thus Iam was forced to wait.

 _"Shipmaster Iam 'Oteree,"_ Truth began and Iam immediately straightened, his entire body quivering as he waited to hear what would become of him. _"The Hierarchy has heard your plea and have adopted a resolution: we will grant you this boon. You will continue your campaign against the humans. And you will exterminate every single heathen in retribution for the most holy life they have dared to take."_

Relief instantly flooded Iam's veins. Praise be the Hierarchs, for they surely were most wise and deserving!

"For every drop of the Holy Eminence's blood they have spilled, I will ensure the humans pay it back a thousand fold with their lives!" Iam could not help but roar in triumph before catching himself. "Hierarchs, I humbly thank -"

Truth held up a single finger and Iam immediately closed his mouth.

 _"But,"_ Truth continued as if Iam had not said a single word. _"The campaign will not continue under your command."_

Iam stared at Truth, not quite comprehending.

"I... Noble Hierarch," he stammered, "your words are as merciful as they are wise, however, your humble servant cannot comprehend them. Please, I beseech you to share your wisdom so that I may learn how to best serve the Hierarchy."

Truth loftily stared at him, and Iam felt his euphoria quickly dissipating.

 _"This... fiasco, was the result of your arrogance,"_ Truth declared, and Iam could not mask his wince as the words cut him deeply. _"You must learn humility. To that, you must learn to obey the commands of another."_

Iam was stunned. He was to be removed from command? While this was certainly better than death or exile, never in his wildest dreams had this possibility occurred to him.

However, what other choice did he have? He could only hope 'Quetshadee would be capable of the task that was to be presented to him.

"It shall be as you command, Noble Hierarch," Iam finally said. "I shall inform my second in command of -"

 _"No."_

Iam's head snapped up at the sudden interruption, and he glanced at Truth with a growing sense of apprehension. "Your Holiness?

 _"No,"_ Truth coldly repeated. _"You are not capable of learning humility from another Sangheili. But perhaps a Jiralhanae..."_

At those words, Iam automatically bristled. A Jiralhanae? A _Jiralhanae!?_ The Hierarchs wished to replace him with a Jiralhanae!? Were the High Prophets _attempting_ to insult -

No. The Noble Hierarchs were as wise as they were merciful, but surely this must have been a mistake.

He glanced up to see Truth was carefully watching him, as if he was expecting a response, and Iam quickly though of some way to protest this decision without resorting to heresy.

"Noble Hierarchs," he began, "that..."

 _"The Hierarchy has spoken, and it shall be so!"_ Regret abruptly snapped, speaking for the first time this conversation began and immediately silencing Iam.

 _"Do you dare disobey a direct commandment from the Hierarchy?"_ Mercy accused, to Iam's horror.

Iam opened his mouth and struggled to find a response, however with all three Prophets of the Hierarchy staring down on him, Iam found he had no choice but to obey.

"It shall be as you command," he resignedly said.

Truth nodded, as if this was what he had been expecting. Then, just as Iam was about to terminate the transmission, he heard Truth say almost as an aside, _"Perhaps the Jiralhanae will be able to accomplish what the Sangheili have not: capture one of the Demons."_

Anger immediately surged through Iam's veins but the transmission ended before he could say anything. In truth, it was a blessing as what Iam had been about to say would have no doubtedly resulted in his immediate execution, but then again, perhaps it would have better if he _had_ been killed. At least then he would not need to suffer through the humiliation of being replaced by a _Jiralhanae_.

Struggling to control his outrage, Iam took a moment to regain his composure before leaving the communicator facility aboard his flagship, feeling conflicted. While he still retained his life and thus, the opportunity to make amends for his failure, the humiliation at being replaced by a Jiralhanae was almost too much to bear.

However, the Hierarchs had spoken, and as their most humble servant, Iam had no choice to obey.

Outside, 'Quetshadee stood, waiting.

"What news Shipmaster?" he asked the moment he laid eyes on 'Oteree.

"I am to continue this campaign against the humans in the name of the Minister of Contentment," Iam began as he struggled to think of a way to break the news to 'Quetshadee."

'Quetshadee swelled with pride.

"Then it is true as they say!" he bellowed. "The High Prophets are as merciful as -"

"But not as its commander."

That gave 'Quetshadee pause.

"You are to no longer be the Fleetmaster?" 'Quetshadee inquired and Iam nodded in confirmation. "Then, it is fortuitous that your wisdom shall remain for I will -"

"You will not lead either."

That simple statement stopped 'Quetshadee short once more.

"No?" he inquired. "Then whom shall...?"

Iam struggled to remove the bitterness from his voice as he spoke. "I know not, only that it is to be a... Jiralhanae."

The effect of Iam's words was instantaneous.

 _"WHAT!?"_ 'Quetshadee shouted, catching the attention of a few Unggoy working nearby, though they quickly turned away at Iam's glare. "The High Prophets would _dare_ sent a Jiralhanae here!? And as your replacement no less!? I do not wish to question the decision of the Hierarchs, but perhaps they do not comprehend the sheer dishonor such a decision would cause? Perhaps the High Council -"

"The High Council has no say in these decisions," Iam interrupted. "Furthermore, they would have undoubtedly demanded the Hierarchs brand me a heretic for my failures. The Minister of Contentment was one their brethren, after all."

Iam let out a sigh. "No, if this is the will of the Prophets, then so be it."

'Quetshadee grunted in agreement, before a sly look crossed his face. "Did the High Prophets mention _when_ the Jiralhanae will arrive? If we were able to complete our conquest of this planet before that time, then surely -"

Iam whirled on him.

"We will do no such thing!" he roared, causing 'Quetshadee to jerk back in alarm. "The Noble Hierarchs have demanded my position, and we, as mere humble servants, will obey! No further offensive action is to take place against the humans until the Jiralhanae arrive! All Legions are to hold their positions until indicated otherwise! Is that clear Evocatus!?"

"Yes, sire!" 'Quetshadee bellowed at the top of his lungs.

"Then see to it my commands are implemented!" Iam ordered, before continuing in a much softer voice. "But once the Jiralhanae arrive, we shall measure their worth. And _when_ they are found lacking...

...the Sangheili will resume their place as military leaders of the Covenant!"

 **XXXXX**

 **Novo Janeiro, Leiria Province, Mamore  
May 6, 2545 (Standard Military Calendar)  
1323 (Local Time)**

 **Naomi Ichii**

Naomi Ichii felt a thrill of excitement as she regarded the math problem her teacher was writing on the board. Naomi might not have been the best at advance calculus, but she was at least able to keep up with the rest of the class. Right now, however, was one of those rare instances where she was pretty sure she knew the answer to the question before any of her classmates did. All she had to do was carry the seven, add the five, and...

"So," her teacher began as she turned around and raised her pen. "Two points for anyone who can solve this problem. Any takers?"

Naomi's hand shot straight into the air.

"And it looks like we have a winner!" her teacher proudly declared, before pointing at some _behind_ Naomi. "You, in the red shirt! Come on up!"

Disappointed, Naomi lowered her hand and glanced behind her to see which one of her classmates had managed to beat her -

Oh of _course_ it was...

Brad Crenshaw came walking down the row towards the front of the class. As he walked by Naomi's desk, he made sure to "accidently" bump into, jostling all her stuff, and when she snapped her head up in annoyance, he turned and gave her a look of absolute smug superiority. Naomi growled under her breath and resisted the urge to leap to her feet and punch him square in the face as he walked past.

Unfortunately, no one else seemed to have noticed their little interaction because her teacher greeted Brad with a bright smile.

"Mister Crenshaw! With the answers, as always! Why don't you show the class how it's done?"

"Well Missus Albright, the answer is simple," Brad said as he began to explain how the problem was solved, however Naomi was no longer listening, not willing or interested in listening to his stupid voice any longer.

Since transferring to this school almost a year ago, Brad Crenshaw had been the bane of Naomi's existence. She didn't know what his problem was, but for some reason, he seemed to go out of his way to get on Naomi's nerves. Her mom had once suggested it was because Brad had a crush on her, but Naomi didn't buy that; she had seen how her now brother-in-law had flirted with her older sister before they had started dating, and it had not consisted of him teasing, belittling, and just in general, being one giant pain in the ass to her.

No, Brad clearly felt insecure about his own masculinity, and was taking it out on Naomi just to make himself feel better. Why her specifically? Probably because she was the new girl, the outsider. Prick.

And speaking of pricks...

"Naomi!" Brad suddenly called out, and Naomi just managed to avoid jumping. "I realize this is probably all going over your head, but at least you could _pretend_ to be paying attention."

Brad smirked as the entire class turned to stare at her, and she shot him her best death glare, which he ignored.

"I was paying attention," Naomi reflexively retorted.

"Oh yeah?" Brad challenged. "Then what did I just say?"

Crap.

Naomi did her best to mentally rewind everything that had been said in the last few minutes. She wished she could reach for her recorder, but then she _would_ be admitting she hadn't been paying attention.

"You said…" Naomi began, hurriedly scanning the board for clues. Wait... there!

"You said that the integral of pi equals one," Naomi confidently announced and watched as the smile on Brad's face turned to that of disappointment. That alone was enough to cause Naomi to perk up, but then, as she was thinking the problem over, she realized something else. "But it doesn't. The integral of pi equals _negative_ one."

"Very good Miss Ichii!" Mrs. Albright declared with a smile as Brad whirled around to stare at the board in shock. "I was wondering if anyone would notice! It was a very good try Mister Crenshaw, but unfortunately by forgetting the negative, the formula changes drastically. So, you see, if we change this..."

Albright continued to drone on, but Naomi was no longer paying attention. Instead, she was watching Brad, waiting to see his reaction. He was busy staring at the board, no doubt re-running the math, and Naomi could tell the exact moment he realized Naomi was right because his shoulders sagged and he turned in her direction, looking pissed.

Naomi resisted the urge to smirk or even react at him in any way shape or form. If their positions were reversed, Naomi knew Brad would be rubbing it in her face, but as much as she disliked him, damn if she was going to sink to his level.

Her sister would have been proud.

 _ **BRINNNNNNGGGGG!**_

Naomi let out a sigh of relief as the ringing of the school bell signaled her sweet release from this prison, at least for today. She quickly began saving all her files as she packed up her stuff.

"Alright class, homework for tonight: go to page three thirty-five and do problems twenty through forty!" Mrs. Albright yelled to be heard over the sound of her students packing up to leave for the day. "As always, try to do your best and _show your work!_ We'll go over them when we resume on Friday!"

As her classmates started to get up to leave, Naomi looked up to see Brad headed in her direction with a determined look on his face. He looked as if he was about to say something, but Naomi had absolutely no interest in listening to anything he had to say, so she reached out and hit the power button.

Her hologram projection abruptly terminated and just like that, Naomi found herself back inside her bedroom at her house.

Letting out a sigh, she carefully slid the hologram receiver off her head and placed it back on the charger so that it would be ready for use tomorrow. God, this hologram was convenient, as now she didn't have to wait for the bus to drop her home before she could go do other things. She kind of wished she had it back when she was still going to regular high school, but the regional government had forbade it for one reason or another. Fortunately, not only was Banner High School a private school(1) which meant they could do whatever they wanted, it was also _the_ premier science and technology school on this side of the continent which meant school officials had had to figure out some way to accommodate students who didn't necessarily live nearby the school itself. Naomi, for example, lived a good two hour car ride away from the campus itself.

Of course, the problem with living so far away was the fact that Naomi was never able to really get to know her fellow classmates, as there wasn't much of an opportunity for them to hang out after class. Her hologram projector obviously only worked on school grounds. As such, despite attending there for almost a year, Naomi still didn't have any friends.

Fortunately, she still kept in touch with her friends from her old high school, but unfortunately they didn't get off until three thirty. Coupled that with a twenty to thirty minute bus ride, basically, that meant Naomi had about an hour to kill before she could even think about trying to figure out what she and her friends were going to do today. What was she going to do in the meantime?

She supposed she could have gotten a head start on her homework, but honestly, she needed a break from schoolwork. She probably should have cleaned her room as her mom had been bugging her about it for a week now, but to do that she needed the vacuum, which was noisy, and with her mom working from home today, Naomi didn't want to disturb her, so that was out. Which just really left her with one thing to do: it was time to catch up on episodes of _Wormhole Jumper_.

Sticking her headphones into her ears, Naomi flicked on the TV she had stolen from her sister's room after she had left for OSUT and quickly selected the newest episode. She was honestly a bit excited. She was hoping to see if Commander Bangeroo would encounter any more clues left behind by the Gamma Killer because honestly, that was turning out to be one of the best plotlines of the season. Plus, it didn't hurt that the actor who played the Gamma Killer was really hot.

The theme song of the show began to play, and just when Naomi was about to settle in, a small window appeared on the bottom of her screen with a small scrolling text that read, _"Breaking news: Covenant invade another colony!"_

Naomi immediately felt her blood run cold. Obviously, with it being the largest and most destructive war in human history, everyone knew about the Human-Covenant War but not only that, just about every family in the city had at least one family member or friend serving in the military today. Everyone had a personal connection to the war and as such, any news about the progress of the war instantly caught everyone's attention.

Pausing her show, Naomi reached out and clicked on the small window. Right away, a clip from her local news channel began to play.

 _"Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen,"_ one of the news anchors was saying. _"If you're just joining us now, we have just received word here at the studio that UNSC officials_ have _confirmed earlier reports that the Covenant have once again invaded another colony. We go now live to a press conference the UNSC is holding at FLEETCOM Headquarters in New Alexandria, on Reach."_

The scene shifted, revealing a very somber looking naval officer standing in front of a large lectern.

 _" - can confirm,"_ the officer was saying, _"that at oh eight hundred hours local Coordinated Universal Time zero zero, Winter Contingency_ was _declared on the colony of Actium. At approximately ten hundred hours, Covenant forces_ were _able to make landfall."_

 _"At this time, United Nations Space Command is working in conjunction with the Actium government in order to ensure all available measure are being taken to defend the colony and her citizens. All available UNSC military units are currently being rerouted to Actium, though for operational security reasons, I cannot tell you who those units are, or where they're being routed from."_

 _"I can however confirm that the UNSC is taking heavy casualties in orbit and on the surface, however a casualty list has not yet been made available as we are still in the process of notifying families."_

 _"At this time, I will be taking questions."_

At that point, a lot of people began speaking and while Naomi couldn't hear what was being said, obviously the officer could because he suddenly said, _"No, unfortunately we do not know how the Covenant were able to discover Actium, though I assure you that is being looked into right now. Next question."_

The reporters began shouting again and the officer cocked his head.

 _"What was that? Numbers? No, I am not authorized at this time to release the estimated number of Covenant attacking at this time. Yes ma'am, you in the front."_

Someone stood up and temporarily blocked the camera, though she obviously wasn't mic'ed as Naomi couldn't hear her question.

 _"Ma'am,"_ the officer said as the woman sat back down, _"we have every reason to believe that the Cole Protocol is still working. If it wasn't, we would be losing colonies at a much faster rate than we already are."_

Naomi couldn't help but shiver at that. Colonies were being lost at a frantic rate already, though admittedly not all of them were the result of the Covenant. To think that losses could be much higher and coming at a faster rate? The thought was almost too frightening to even think about.

Naomi suddenly decided she was done and switched her TV off, too bothered by the news to continue watching. Nothing good had ever come out of the war.

After a few moments of thought though, Naomi changed her mind and switched her TV back on. Instead of returning to the news though, she quickly logged onto Waypoint instead. She had never heard of Actium, which was hardly surprising given how many colonies there were, but now she wanted to know more.

For obvious reasons, Actium was number one trending on just about every single search engine, so Naomi clicked on the first link she saw, which brought her to some encyclopedia article. She quickly began browsing. Okay... Actium, only colonized planet in the Ambracia System... gravity at 0.8g... 35.5 hour long days though citizens use a 36 hour day calendar instead. Fell under the command of FLEETCOM Sector Seventeen which in turn was command by one Admiral Lukas Spaatz and Force Master Chief Petty Officer Kojo Massoud…

Uh-oh.

Naomi highlighted the sentence she had just seen to make sure she had read it correctly the first time.

"Due to the large amount of iron ore located within the planet's surface, Actium host the _fifth_ largest UNSC shipyards just behind Reach, Mars, Earth, and Meridian, and is one of the largest producers of ground vehicles for the UNSC."

"Fifth largest," Naomi repeated to herself as she leaned back in her seat. "Oh, that's sooo not good."

For a few moments, Naomi just sat there, pondering the affects losing the fifth largest shipyards would have on the UNSC war machine when another thought occurred to her. Her sister's division, the 222nd Airborne Division of the UNSC Army. Last she had heard, they were on Newsaka, fighting the Covenant invasion there. Surely her sister wouldn't have been one of those units that had been routed to Actium?

Sitting back up, Naomi quickly began typing.

"How far away is the colony of Newsaka from the colony of Actium," Naomi muttered to herself as she typed. As she worked, she suddenly heard the doorbell to the front door ring, but she ignored it in lieu of waiting for the results to her query. Her mom would get it. It was probably for her anyways.

Her computer let out a small ping as a star chart popped up. Naomi sighed. Astronomy was never her strong point but then again, how else was she supposed to figure out where Actium was in relation to Newsaka.

She was just about to start when suddenly -

"NAOMI!"

Naomi hastily ripped her headphone off at her mom's shout.

"Yeah mom?" she yelled back.

"Naomi! Come quick! There's someone to see you!"

See _her?_

Naomi glanced at the clock. Could that have been one of her friends? No, her friends had just gotten out of class. They would still need another twenty minutes before they got home.

Then who could it be?

Feeling mystified, Naomi left her room. She could hear her mom talking to someone in the living room. As she walked down the stairs, she could see someone standing in the room wearing a military uniform and her heart started to beat just a bit faster. No... could it be...?

Naomi dashed into the room to see -

"AJAX!" she squealed, both in surprise and delight. Her brother-in-law whirled around in time to catch her as she hurtled herself at him in a hug.

"Hey Naomi!" Ajax cheerfully declared as he pulled her in tight. "Guess this means you're happy to see me...?"

"What do you think, dummy," Naomi said with a grin as she broke away from the hug. "What are you doing here? I thought you weren't coming until next week?"

Ajax shrugged.

"You know how unpredictable slipspace can be. Somehow got here a week early, didn't know what to do with myself, so I figured I would go ahead and surprise you. And mom. And dad."

"Don't lie Ajax," Naomi's mom jokingly said from behind her. "We all know you just came back to do your laundry."

"Well, that too," Ajax admitted with a grin. "But mostly to see you guys!"

"Uh-huh."

"Seriously!"

"And I believe you," Naomi's mom replied with a twinkle in her eye.

As she watched her mom and her brother-in-law interact, Naomi couldn't help but feel a swell of pride at how far Ajax had come. She was old enough to remember when her dad had first brought Ajax over to stay in their house while the government tried to figure out what to do with him. Back then, Ajax had been just another war orphan refugee, another victim of the Covenant's rampage across human space. With his entire family having been killed by the alien invaders, Ajax had been a scared, traumatized, and very angry boy. Now, standing here in the room clad in his Air Force dress uniform, it was clear that Ajax was now a happy, healthy, young man.

"Oh! I need you call your father!" Naomi's mom was saying. "He's going to want to see you!"

"Oh, you don't need to do that mom," Ajax said. "I know he's busy at work and I didn't want to make this a huge deal."

"Are you kidding?" Naomi said, reentering the conversation. "Dad's been looking forward to this day ever since you told us you would probably be able to get some leave this month. He's been talking about it non-stop!"

"Has he really?" Ajax asked, glancing down at her, and Naomi could see a slightly bashful look on his face. Naomi snorted.

"Of course! But don't tell him I told you that 'cause, like, he will never admit to it."

"Oh don't worry, you're secret is safe with me," Ajax told her, tapping the side of his nose.

"Ohhh, this is so exciting!" Naomi's mom declared, practically bouncing up and down with joy. "Oh! Let me go call your father!"

Naomi and Ajax shared a smile as she hurried from the room.

"She seems excited," Ajax noted.

Naomi rolled her eyes. "Come on dude, of course she's excited. Her son just came home. How else was she going to react?"

Ajax shrugged but Naomi could him barely hiding his delighted grin.

"Hey! So, you hear from Piper recently?" Naomi asked, changing topics. "Any idea when she's coming back home?"

Ajax nodded. "Yeah, I spoke to her couple weeks ago; her division was making preparations to leave Newsaka. Plus, I also got a message from her on my way in, though I haven't had a chance to look at it. Probably just a message letting us know she's back on Skopje. Should be another week or so before Pip is able to get leave."

"Sweet! In that case, you mind if I talk wedding stuff? I've got this idea that I think would be really cute for you guys to do," Naomi asked, staring at Ajax with her best puppy eyes. Despite being legally married, her sister and Ajax had yet to hold a formal ceremony, which was something they both had agreed would wait until Piper got back from her deployment. Naomi, in the meantime, had been making a lot of plans, most of which she hoped her siblings would adapt.

Ajax took one look at her and burst out laughing.

"Okay Squirt," he said, using the family nickname for her. "I have a feeling if I were to say no, you'd burst. Let's hear it."

"Great!" Naomi brightly said. "It's up in my room though. Come on!"

Grabbing his arm, Naomi dragged Ajax over to the stairs.

"Mom, we're going up to my room real quick!" she yelled as she ran by.

Thundering up the stairs, Naomi burst into her room and activated her TV.

"So, what's this 'great idea' of yours that you can't wait to show me?" Ajax asked as he followed her in at a more sedated pace. Naomi glared him.

"Hey, I heard those quotation marks!" she accused. "I resent that! Shouldn't you know by now all my ideas are great?!"

Ajax snorted.

"This coming from the girl who thought trying to make napalm in their parent's kitchen was the best idea ever?" he asked, arching his eyebrows.

Naomi could feel her cheeks starting to burn as the memory. It had been a science project she had been attempting to do back in middle school. She couldn't even remember what the project had been about, but somehow, she had accidently created a very weak version of napalm. Weak or not though, when she had accidently ignited it, it had been enough to almost burn down the entire kitchen. Piper had been able to help her put it out, but there had been no way to hide the damage from their parents.

"Shut up," Naomi mumbled. "I thought we swore never to talk about that again."

She suddenly cocked her head. She thought she had just heard someone knocking on the front door downstairs.

"I don't believe _**I**_ ever was part of that deal," Ajax teased, drawing Naomi's attention back to him. Must have been her imagination. "Besides: it's my favorite story. It's a story that needs to be preserved for the ages. Your kids are totally going to be hearing about it from me when you have them."

Naomi growled under her breath.

"Anyways, what were you about to show me…?" Ajax prompted and Naomi brightened.

"Oh right!" she began. "Well, since you and Piper are both part of the military now, as are most of you guys' friends, I was looking up some military weddings and I was thinking –"

" _AJAX!"_

Naomi reflexively jumped at her mom's terrified scream. She and Ajax shared one look of concern before sprinting down the stairs.

"Mom?" Naomi yelled as she ran. "Are you okay?"

She reached the door to the living room and stopped short. Her mom was standing off to one side, looking absolutely terrified. Standing on the opposite side of the room were –

Oh… _no…_

Two somber looking UNSC Army soldiers wearing dress uniforms stood near the door, standing straight as a board.

Without a word, Naomi slipped into the room and hurried to her mom's side, grabbing her hand, as Ajax walked up to the two men with a confused look on his face.

"What the hell is this all about!?" he demanded to know.

The two soldiers glanced at each other, before turning to him.

"Airman Ajax Savrog?" the higher ranking of the two soldiers, a 1st Lieutenant by the looks of it, asked.

"Yes…?" Ajax cautiously confirmed.

The Lieutenant sighed and somehow stood up even straighter and just like that, Naomi knew. "Airman, the Secretary of the Army has asked me to inform you that your wife, Corporal Piper Poblede, has been reported missing in action on Actium since ten hundred hours local time this morning. When we receive more information, you will be promptly notified. The Secretary extends his deepest sympathy to you and your family during this trying period."

…wait, what?

Naomi exchanged a glance with her mom. Missing in action? That… while that wasn't good news, it wasn't exactly what Naomi had been expecting, if she was being honest with herself. She wasn't sure if she should have felt relieved or not. At any case, Naomi was more concerned about how Ajax would take that and she look over to him, only to see him… laughing in relief?

"Airman?" the Lieutenant asked, clearly just as confused by Ajax's reaction as Naomi was.

Ajax quickly cleared his throat.

"Sorry, sir," he said. "I realize that's probably not the most appropriate action, but fellows… I think you got the wrong person."

The two soldiers exchanged glances, and Naomi could see the other soldier, a regular Sergeant, pull out a data pad.

"You are… Ajax Jaroslaw Savrog? Of the UNSC Air Force? Service number seven five nine three zero dash nine three one two eight dash Sierra Alpha? And your wife is Piper Meghan Poblede of the UNSC Army, service number six four seven eight three dash one five eight zero nine dash Papa Papa?" he asked. Ajax frowned.

"I am," he confirmed. "And that is her. But… Pip's not an E-4. Nor should she be anywhere _near_ Actium. She's on Newsaka, which is… very far away from Actium!"

"I'm sorry Airman," the Sergeant said apologetically. "I don't know what else I can tell you. This is the information we've been provided. I'm very sorry."

Without another word, the two soldiers slipped out the front door, leaving everyone very confused and very worried.

As the door quietly shut, Ajax slowly turned around and Naomi felt her heart break at the sight of how lost he looked.

"But… she's on Newsaka," was all he could say.

Naomi reached out to him but before she could do anything, the door abruptly opened again and she felt her heart leap, hoping upon hope that it was those two soldiers coming back to apologize, to say they had gotten the wrong house, the wrong person, or… something! But unfortunately, it was only her dad.

"There he is!" her dad said with a large grin on his face, but then stop short at the sight of his family just standing there. "Are you guys alright? Did… did something happen?"

 **xxx**

 _ **Later that Evening**_

"…and they just said she was missing in action? No other details?" her dad asked again for the hundredth time from his spot at the kitchen sink, where he had been standing there, unmoving, for the last few hours.

"That's all they said," Naomi confirmed as she held her stuffed elephant toy, Mr. Snugglepolis, against her chest for comfort. "They gave no other details."

"I don't… I don't understand," her dad said again. "How could she have gone missing in action on Actium? Wasn't she supposed to be on Newsaka?"

"But she's only missing, right? Not dead. That means there's hope, right?" her mom pitifully asked from her position at the head of the dining room table.

"Yeah mom, you're right: there's still hope," Naomi said, trying to force a smile on her face but internally, she wasn't so sure. Piper had told her once about her original squad leader, Staff Sergeant Wilbert Tanner. About how he had gone "missing in action" over the skies of Newsaka, only, everyone knew he was dead and he was only labelled "missing" because there wasn't enough left of him to identify. Naomi couldn't help but wonder if this was a similar situation.

"I mean, we still don't even really know that was her," her dad pointed out. "'Corporal?' Squirt, did Piper ever tell you she'd been promoted?"

Naomi shook her head. No, last she heard, Piper was still a PFC.

 _ **CRASH!**_

Naomi jumped at the sound of something breaking coming from upstairs. Alarmed, she and her parents surged to their feet and dash upstairs.

"AJAX! Honey? Are you alright!?" her mom called out from behind her.

Dashing into the room where Ajax had been hiding out ever since the soldiers had left, Naomi arrived in time to see Ajax driving his fist into the wall once more.

"No no no! Ajax, don't do that!" Naomi's mom blurted out, running over to Ajax and pulling him into a hug. At first he started to resist, but upon recognition of who had grabbed him, he relaxed and started sobbing, allowing Naomi to look around. The room was a mess. It was clear something had very clearly upset Ajax greatly.

"Ajax, shush, it's going to be okay," her mom was softly saying into Ajax's ear. "Please don't do this to yourself. Everything is going to be okay. Those soldiers are going to come back tomorrow and tell us this was all one giant mistake, okay? It couldn't have been Piper."

"No they won't," Naomi heard Ajax sob, "Because it was her."

Naomi stiffened.

"Ajax, you can't know that for certain," Naomi cautiously said.

In lieu of a response, Ajax merely pointed his desk where his TACPAD laid. The device was active, and it was clear Ajax had been watching a video as there was simply a 'replay' on the screen.

Nervously approaching the device, as if it would suddenly come alive and bit her, Naomi cautiously reached out and hit replay. Immediately, Piper's face appeared, and Naomi was stuck by the sight of how _tired_ she looked.

" _Hey babe,"_ she began, sounding exhausted. _"I know I told you that… it would probably only be a couple more weeks before I could get some leave but… god, I don't know how to say this so I'm just going to say it: something has happened. Something bad. The Covenant… the Covenant have hit another colony. Someplace called… Actium."_

Naomi felt her blood freeze at that. _No…_

" _We don't know too many details, but from what Division is telling us, it… it sounds bad. Really bad. They need help and they need it now. So… we're getting rerouted. Me, my squad, the entire division…_ " Piper suddenly let out a loud scoff. _"Well, at least, what's_ left _of the division. God… I don't know if this is a good idea…"_

Piper suddenly stopped and seemed to force a smile onto her face. _"Good news is, I finally managed to pick up Corporal! So, yay?"_ Piper laughed, but there was no joy in it, only a sense of sadness and bitterness. _"God babe. There is so much I want to tell you but…there's never enough time, is there?"_

Piper abruptly looked up, and in the background, Naomi could hear someone saying over the intercom, _"All infantry: report to Hanger Bay One for immediately loading process._ "

" _Look,"_ Piper said as she turned back to the camera. _"I don't have enough time left and there's still a lot I need to prepare for. I just want to say, I hope to god by the time you get this, you'll have another message from me saying that I'm alright, and that you can delete this and never have to look at it. But, in case something happens to me, in case… in case I don't make it, I just want you to know: I don't regret any of it. All the time we had together, all the ups and downs, all the screaming matches, all the arguments, all the snuggles and all the kisses… I don't regret any of it. I only wish we had more time. I love you. With all my heart."_

" _I know they're your family now too so this really goes without saying but… can you please take care of my parents for me? I'd include Squirt here too, but we both know she's one spunky bitch and she can damn well take of herself."_

Naomi couldn't help but laugh along as a genuine smile crossed Piper's face, though it was fleeting.

" _Anyways,"_ she said. _"Mom, dad: if you're watching this, I just wanted to say: thank you. I know you guys told me I would never have to say it, but thank you. Thank you for taking me in when my parents died on Arcadia so many years ago. Thank you for being there for me when I needed you guys the most. You guys are angels and I will always forever be grateful for what you did for me."_

" _Naomi?"_

Naomi looked up at the sound of Piper calling her name, and for a moment, Naomi was convinced the video had somehow turned into a live connection as Piper seemed to be looking right at her. But no, it was still only a recording.

" _Ah Naomi, you little Squirt. You were a very annoying little brat, just so you know… but you were my sister. And I wouldn't have given you up for anything else in this galaxy. I know I always told you to ignore him but… next time you see Brad, make sure to sneak some of that napalm of yours into his lunch. That ought to teach that little shit for messing with my sister."_

At that, the tears Naomi had been fighting against finally won, and she could feel them trickling down her cheeks. With only a whisper of a noise, her dad reached out and pulled her into a hug, one that Naomi refused to resist.

" _I love you guys. I hope I'll see you again,_ " Piper was saying, before she kissed her fingers and pressed it against the camera. At that, the recording abruptly ended, and Piper's image faded away.

And just like that, Naomi felt her world fall apart.

* * *

General Notes

The first half of this chapter is basically the other side of the conversation that took place in the second half of the epilogue for _Missing in Action._ For those of you who don't remember and don't wish to go back, that chapter dealt with the repercussions of the mission that resulted in the death of the Minister of Contentment, as portrayed in chapter 30 of this story. As stated in this chapter, it was the first time a Prophet had been killed in the war against the humans, however I do want to note that I don't actually believe this is canon. I couldn't figure out for sure either way, but given that this story takes places twenty years into the war, I find it a little hard to believe that a Prophet hadn't actually been killed by UNSC forces yet. However, for the sake of the story, that's what I ultimately went with.

The second half of this story deals with, again, the aftermath of _Missing in Action._ Piper Poblede is actually one of the main characters from that story. In that story, we see her getting killed (as we also did in this one; see chapter 33,) but given that the only person (human, that is) who witnessed the event ended up in a coma for a month, it couldn't be confirmed hence the missing in action label.

One of the reasons why I wrote this (okay, there were actually many reason,) was that I wanted to explore what it would be like from the civilian side of things, the sense of confusion and uncertainty one might have if their loved ones had gone missing. The idea of not knowing, and thus not being able to move on... I'm sure quite a few you reading this now could probably imagine how that would feel.

Originally I was going to make this one of the 'one-shots' I had attached to the end of MIA, however I realized it would take more than a single chapter to portray the things I wanted so I decided to save it. It probably could have been a standalone story by itself, however I didn't have that much material and so I felt it was best to attach it to this one.

However, given that this story already has far too many characters in it, I'll just be using Naomi Ichii's viewpoint for "interludes" like this one between Books.


	36. Chapter 36

And… we're back!

Welcome back everyone (or, just welcome to any new readers!), to _Battle: Actium,_ Book _**2**_! It took me a lot longer than I expected, mostly because I keep forgetting how long "one update every two weeks" actually is, but hey, we finally made it!

As always, many thanks to everyone who's been following not just this story, but all my other ones over the last few years. Special thanks goes to both my editors, **Darkfire7881** and **TheWildCanuck** (see the favorite authors tab on my profile for links to their profiles.)

* * *

 **Chapter 36**

 **High Orbit, Actium  
May 7, 2545  
0030**

 **Gunner's Mate Amber Owain**

The dropship rattled and shook, causing Gunner's Mate Amber Owain to snap her head up in alarm. Fortunately, the disturbance was the result of the Pelican beginning its final approach to the hangar; and not the start of a Covenant attack. Still, Amber found herself unable to truly relax.

The last twenty-four hours or so had been a stressful time for her, to say the least. She had been aboard Wayward Station when the Covenant first emerged in the system and as such, she had been drafted to aid in the station's defense. Manning a remote Onager turret, she had tried to help the rest of the station defenders drive off the Covenant aerial attack. However, in spite of their best efforts, the Covenant still managed to land troops on the station; leading to Amber being moved to help fight them off.

Fortunately, while the Covenant had superior firepower, the station had everything else: superior numbers, better defensive locations, as well as the home field advantage. As a result, Amber and her comrades had nearly been successful in driving the boarders off when –

The nearby orbital defense platform, Byzas Station, had blown up. Amber had no idea how the Covenant had managed it, but the ensuing explosion had hurtled shrapnel through the void in all directions; some of which struck Wayward and tore apart the Covenant landing craft they had used to assault the station, leaving major hull breaches in their wake. The explosive decompression that followed had devastated both sides, with all sorts of people and aliens getting sucked out before the emergency bulkhead doors could seal. Amber herself had almost been one of the victims; in fact, she surely would have been if her commander at the time hadn't grabbed her at the last moment.

After that though, the station's participation in the battle was over. With hull integrity failing and power at less than thirty percent, there wasn't much Wayward Station could do to defend itself; so everyone on board did their best to make themselves as small and unnoticeable as possible, so as to not attract the Covenant's attention back on to station.

Fortunately for Wayward and everyone on board, with Byzas Station out of the way the Covenant had shifted the weight of their attack to the surface, leaving any and all crippled stations and ships in orbit to be dealt with at a later time. With the main threat moving on, it then became a simple matter to eliminate the last of the Covenant boarders, patch most of the major breaches in the hull –

-and then wait. Wait for most of the fighting to clear up so the UNSC could spare some ships to rescue the survivors. Wait to hear from the surface to find out how bad the situation was on the ground. And finally, wait for long-range communications to be partially restored so people could maybe get a chance to contact their families and friends.

Unfortunately for Amber, that last part was going to have to wait. The only family member she had in the system was one of her aunts, who was stationed on the surface of Actium with the UNSC Army unit. Her unit was right in the middle of the fight to contain the Covenant landing site; both sides fighting tooth and nail to control the city of Byzas. Naturally, the UNSC was suppressing _all_ non-military communications in and around the city, both to clear the airwaves and to deny the Covenant a possibly valuable source of intelligence. As such, Amber had no idea how her aunt was doing, or if she was even still alive, which was obviously causing her a great deal of distress.

On the other hand, Amber _was_ able to find out that her ship, the UNSC _Gabrielle_ , had somehow managed to survive the initial space battles, the knowledge of which had cheered her up considerably. After all, the _Gabrielle_ was not only her home away from home, it was also where most of her friends had been when the attack started. So, if the ship had survived, chances were high they had too.

Amber was suddenly drawn out of her thoughts when, near the back of the Pelican, one of the dropship's crew chiefs abruptly stood up.

"Listen up!" the man quietly called out. "We're two mikes away from docking with the UNSC _Gabrielle._ "

And then, without another word, the man sat back down.

Amber let out a mute sigh of relief. She was almost home.

Carefully, so as to not accidentally hit the two Sailors sitting on either side of her, Amber reached out to jab at the person sitting directly across the aisle from her; her best friend and fellow shipmate, Missile Technician Haley Pool.

"Poolsie!" Amber called out as the sound of the Pelican's landing gear extending filled the cargo bay. "Get up!"

Poolsie jerked awake and looked around wildly, before her eyes fell upon Amber and she immediately relaxed.

"Amber? What's going on?" she mumbled as she reached up and tried to wipe away the exhaustion from her eyes.

"We're almost home," Amber told her, and she watched as Poolsie nodded and sat upright. There was no chance for further conversation though, as the Pelican abruptly hit the deck with a loud _bump,_ causing the small dropship to shake.

"ALRIGHT! EVERYBODY OFF!" the same crew chief from earlier yelled as the rear loading ramp popped open with a loud hiss of hydraulics, revealing one of the _Gabrielle's_ two hangar bays.

The sound of restraints being removed filled the air as everyone started to climb to their feet, and Amber hastily followed suit. She paused long enough to allow Poolsie to get in front of her, and quickly followed as everyone eagerly started to make their way off the dropship. So caught up was Amber in being back on the _Gabrielle_ , she almost didn't notice when Poolsie abruptly stopped in front of her.

"What the hell…" she heard Poolsie exclaim, causing Amber to roll her eyes in annoyance.

"Come on Poolsie: you can't just stop in the middle of the ramp like that," Amber started to say as she made her way past her friend, only to immediately stop short herself at the sight of the object Poolsie was currently gaping at. "What the fuck?"

Sitting in the _Gabrielle's_ other hangar bay was another Pelican, much like the one she and Poolsie were standing on. Only this Pelican had very clearly crashed into the hangar.

With her hull sitting directly on the flight deck, it wasn't very hard to figure out that the Pelican had come crashing into the ship at high speeds. Not only had all of the Pelican's landing gear snapped off, there were deep scratches carved into the metal of the flight deck itself. Furthermore, it also appeared that the dropship had somehow managed to smash through every single crash barrier - designed specifically to stop an out-of-control craft such as this - as the Pelican's nose was forced up against the far hangar bulkhead. The force of the crash caused the entire front of the Pelican to crumple inward; not to mention the sizable dent it left in the hangar bay wall. The dent itself was also an indication of how fast the bird had been moving, as the bulkhead walls lining the hangars were composed of Titanium-A plating almost half-a-meter thick; a precaution to protect the rest of the ship in the event of an explosion.

"Holy crap!" Amber exclaimed. "What the hell happened here!?"

"C'mon ladies, let's keep moving!" someone from behind them yelled.

Absentmindedly, Amber followed Poolsie as they walked the rest of the way down the ramp, still fixated on the wreck in front of her. As she got closer, Amber was able to see past the black tarp that had been draped across the entirety of the downed bird's hull. To her surprise, the Pelican wasn't even a naval dropship; it had clearly come from the air force, as it was covered in UNSC Air Force markings.

"What the hell is the Air Force doing, crashing into our ship?" Amber indignantly demanded to know. "Blocking the hangars and everything!"

"Yeah. Maybe this is why it took so long for us to transfer back here," Poolsie agreed. "They needed to make sure the hangar was safe before letting any more boats dock."

Amber nodded her head.

"And to maybe clean up the bodies," she couldn't help but grimly note. Given the extensive damage done to the Pelican, chances were high someone aboard had died in the crash. "Wonder why they landed here instead of a ship with a much longer crash deck."

Poolsie nodded her head and opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, a very familiar voice filled the air:

"AMBER!"

"Oh, _great_ ," Amber heard Poolsie groan, and that reaction alone was enough to let her know who was approaching.

With a slight sinking sensation, Amber slowly turned around.

Rapidly walking towards them with an excited look on his face, was one of Amber and Poolsie's shipmates, Damage Controlman Edward MacGrath.

"Amber! Beautiful Amber! I'm so glad to see you made it!" MacGrath exclaimed as he walked right up to Amber, brushing past Poolsie like she wasn't even there.

"Hi Eddie," Amber reluctantly replied. "You know, it wasn't just me that made it: Poolsie made it too."

MacGrath turned and glanced at Poolsie, as if seeing her for the first time.

"Oh, hey Pool, didn't see you standing there," he casually said.

"MacGrath," Poolsie coolly replied.

Then, without another word, MacGrath immediately turned back to Amber with a wide smile on his face, causing her to mentally let out a sigh. This was part of the reason why she didn't like dealing with MacGrath.

It wasn't that MacGrath was an asshole so much as he was simply obnoxious. The thing about MacGrath was that he had a humongous crush on Amber, and usually their off-duty conversations ended with him trying to outrageously flirt with her. For the most part, Amber found his attempts to hit on her rather childish and pathetic, and the fact that Poolsie had taken an instant disliking to him the first time they met didn't help things.

Nevertheless, Amber usually tolerated his presence for one simple reason: the rating he held. As a damage controlman, MacGrath's job involved the inspection and repair of the _Gabrielle's_ entire hull. That meant he had access to the entire ship and, therefore, the latest and juiciest gossip. And right now, Amber was starving for information.

"Amber, my sweet. The jewel of my life," MacGrath was saying in the meantime, but Amber quickly interrupted him.

"Yeah, whatever," she said dismissively, and before he could say anything else, she jerked her head in the direction of the crashed Pelican. "What the hell happened here?"

MacGrath's eyes immediately lit up with excitement.

"Oh, dude! You should have seen it!" he exclaimed. "So, there we were, sitting in orbit along with the rest of the fleet, just waiting for something to happen, when Captain Lancaster gets orders from FLEETCOM HQ to go down into the atmosphere to retrieve some sort of package. Weird, right? But you know, FLEETCOM, can't say no. So we head down to atmo and _bam!_ There's a Pelican flying right towards us with like, a hundred Banshees on its tail. The sky was just covered in fighters. It was kind of like, you know, you throw a rock at a beehive and all the bees come swarming out? Yeah, kind of like that."

"I think you were the only one ever stupid enough to do that when you were a kid," Amber heard Poolsie mutter under her breath, and Amber had to fight hard not to start grinning.

Fortunately, MacGrath didn't seem to notice.

"Anyways," he continued, "there were also all sorts of Broadswords and Longswords and shit protecting the Pelican so we figured, Pelican's got to be the package, right? So we evac the hangars, pop open the doors, and let them in. I don't know who was flying that thing though 'cause they came in at like, Mach seventy. They plowed right through all five of our crash barricades, hit the damn arrestor bed, and hit the bulkhead wall before they stopped. It was crazy!"

"'Course, that wasn't the end of it," MacGrath added as Amber opened her mouth to ask a question.

"What do you mean?" Amber asked instead.

"Well, once we had the package, we figured we had to get outta dodge, right? So, we start to head to orbit, only, the damn Banshees start flying into us!"

"What, like on purpose?" Poolsie asked. "Like, kamikazes?"

"Exactly!" MacGrath said, pointing at her.

Amber and Poolsie exchanged a look of worry.

"Eddie," Amber slowly began, "is this ship alright? Like, structurally speaking?"

MacGrath shrugged.

"Me, Ally, and the Chief have been inspecting the main keel beams all morning. Couldn't find any damage, but lotta systems were damaged or knocked offline. Including the main battery," he reported, jerking his head in Amber's direction. "Shepard is probably gonna want you to take a look at it as soon as she hears you're back onboard."

"Shepard?" Amber repeated. "Why would Lieutenant Shepard care what I do?"

"She's the new TAO."

"What!? What happened to Commander Seybou?"

"He was on Byzas Station," MacGrath grimly reported. "There hasn't been any official word but… we're pretty sure he didn't make it off before the station went up.

Amber was stunned. Lieutenant Commander Issa Seybou had been the tactical action officer for as long as she had been assigned to this ship. To hear he was gone, just like that… well, it was shocking to say the least.

"Anyone else not make it?" she heard Poolsie ask in the distance.

"Well, you know, half the crew was off the ship when the attack began. People are still trickling in so… hard to say."

"Christ," Amber muttered, as she considered her next words. As much as she wanted to know who had made it, she really didn't want to know who _hadn't_ , so she searched around the room for something else to ask. Her eyes fell on the Pelican once more.

"What was even in the Pelican by the way?" Amber asked.

"That's the thing!" MacGrath exclaimed, sounding a bit too excited for the change in subject. Perhaps the talk of all the deaths was bothering him too. "Nobody knows! Because as soon as we put out the fires, the order comes down from the bridge: no one gets near the Pelican, not even search and rescue. Fifteen minutes later, fucking Navy SEALs show up!"

"SEALs?" Poolsie skeptically echoed. "How do you know they were SEAL?"

MacGrath waved his hand dismissively. "They all had on the navy blue special ops type armor Navy operators wear, instead of the jet black armor the ODSTs have; plus, they were all carrying suppressed M7 submachine guns. But that's not the point. The point is, they kicked everyone out of the hangar. Not even Captain Lancaster was allowed in! Cameras, all surveillance equipment; everything was blacked out! They must have been trying to remove whoever was in the Pelican for medical treatment because twenty minutes later, when they finally allowed us back in, the whole cockpit had been cut to pieces. And then, Leonard - you know, OS3 Zubair who works in the CIC? - he said he managed to track a single transport craft leaving our hangars and heading straight for the UNSC _Tranquility!_ "

Amber blinked at that. She honestly had no idea what the _Tranquility_ was, but given the name, she was willing to bet it was a hospital ship.

"So somebody _did_ survive the crash," she noted.

"Yeah. It's crazy isn't it!?"

Without warning, Poolsie poked Amber in the arm, as if something had just suddenly occurred to her.

"Hey, if Shepard is the new TAO, she's probably going to be looking for us," Poolsie said when Amber looked up. "We better get going."

"Good point," Amber admitted. "But I wanna stop by my rack first. You go ahead, I'll catch up. See you later MacGrath."

Without another word, Amber took off in the direction of the enlisted berthing. Her mind was racing, trying to process all the new information MacGrath had just provided her. So much to take in, first and foremost being the casualties; evidently Amber's ship had not emerged from the battle as unscathed as she had initially thought. Then there was the potential damage the ship had suffered. She couldn't help but wonder just how many systems had been knocked offline and what exactly she and the rest of the crew were going to have to do in order to restore the _Gabrielle_ to full working condition.

She was still pondering the subject as she entered the enlisted crew quarters and looked around. On a ship the size of a _Halberd_ -class destroyer, there wasn't enough room for everyone to have their own quarters so outside of the captain and the executive officer, the rest of the crew stayed in a compartment that looked very similar to the barracks Amber had stayed in while in boot camp. Every sailor was issued a rack and a footlocker for personal items. The compartment was then further divided between the "men's section" and the "women's section."

For the most part, the sleeping quarters were all rather spartan, however most of the crew – at least on the women's side, Amber wasn't sure about the men's – had done their best to decorate the walls with pictures, posters, and even a couple of blankets; all in order to make the area feel just a bit more homely. However, upon entering the compartment, Amber was startled to see most of those decorations were now scattered all over the place, probably the result of the chaos that ensued during the battle against the Banshees.

Making sure not to accidently step on anything, Amber walked over to her rack and tossed her stuff onto her bed before turning around. With a loud sigh, Amber started cleaning up.

Gathering up all the decorations, Amber did her best to put everything back in its proper place. She started with the posters, as they were the easiest because she could actually remember where they went.

Next, she started working on the other items, like the pictures, blankets, and other decorative pieces of artwork she and her shipmates had put up to add a bit more color to their home.

It wasn't until Amber reached the photographs that she hesitated.

One of the things her friends had done was establish a sort of "memorial wall" for all the people they knew that had fallen in the war against the Covenant. Out of the four main UNSC military service branches, the UNSC Navy had borne the brunt of this twenty year war, and with many members of the crew coming from families with a naval tradition, just about everyone onboard had a family member or a friend who had been killed in action against the Covenant. And Amber was no exception.

Slowly picking up the pictures one by one, Amber paused reverently as she reached her contribution to the memorial wall: a picture of her dad.

Unlike most of the other pictures depicting the fallen, her dad had not been a member of the UNSC Navy, but had actually been a member of the Colonial Military Administration. This hadn't prevented her father from getting deployed alongside his ship if the situation required, as had happened six years ago when the colony of Kholo was invaded. Despite the best efforts of the UNSC and the CMA, the colony had been lost, along with the ship that Amber's father had served on.

The death of her father had been the main motivating factor for Amber's own enlistment with the UNSC Navy, however there wasn't a day that went by where she wouldn't rather have her father back.

The sound of the door to the compartment suddenly opening behind her caused Amber to jump, and she hastily wiped her eyes as she placed the picture back in its proper place on the wall. Taking a moment to regain her composure, Amber stood up and turned around, expecting to see Poolsie standing there, only –

To Amber's horror, it wasn't Poolsie standing there behind her, but Shepard.

"Owain," Lieutenant Shepard quietly greeted and Amber mentally swore as she snapped to attention.

"Lieutenant," Amber cautiously returned.

"Heard you were down here. Glad to see you made it," Shepard uncomfortably announced.

"Thanks. I guess," Amber stiffly replied.

And just like that, the conversation fizzled out and for a moment, the two of them just stood there, awkwardly staring at each other.

The reason for their silence was simple: Amber and Shepard did not get along. At all. Lieutenant Hannah Shepard was a young and ambitious officer, and from what Amber had heard amid the scuttlebutt, had a stated goal of becoming the youngest fleet admiral in the entire history of the UNSC Navy. Because of that desire, Shepard strove to prevent _anything_ from derailing her career and as a result, she was very much a "by-the-book" type of officer; expecting the sailors under her command to do what she told them, when she told them, and without question. Unfortunately, this strict and rigid attitude had contrasted greatly with Amber's more outspoken and defiant nature, and it had only taken a few days after she'd been assigned to the ship for Amber to land on Shepard's shitlist, on which she had stayed on semi-permanent basis.

To complicate matters further, whereas Shepard was an officer, Amber was only a junior enlisted sailor. Because of this, could do very little to retaliate against any and all injustices, real or perceived, that Shepard leveled against her. As such, the only real course of action Amber had was simply to avoid Shepard as much as possible, something that had been relatively easy to do when Shepard was the _Gabrielle_ 's officer of the deck, which meant she and Amber had been assigned to work at different stations on the ship.

However, if it was true that Shepard had been appointed as the new TAO, that meant their dynamic was going to change drastically in the upcoming days, as now they would be forced to work directly together.

Without warning, Shepard suddenly sighed, breaking the uneasy silence that had permeated through the compartment, and snapping Amber out of her thoughts.

"Listen Owain," she began, "Let me blunt here: I don't like you. I think you're childish, insubordinate, and a spoiled little brat."

Anger immediately surged through Amber's veins and she automatically opened her mouth to retaliate, but Shepard quickly lifted her hand.

"No. Now's not the time to talk, now's the time to listen," she insisted and reluctantly, Amber closed her mouth. "My point is, I don't like you, and I'm pretty sure the feeling is mutual. And you know what? That's fine. I didn't embark on my chosen career path expecting all of the sailors under my command to actually _like_ me. I do, however, expect all my sailors to _obey_ my orders."

"I think you and I can both agree," Shepard continued, "that whatever so-called 'feud' we've got going on, it no longer matters. Because with the arrival of the Covenant, everything has changed. After all, the Covenant don't care whether we get along or not, they'll kill both of us without hesitation for simply breathing. So, what I'm tell… what I'm _asking_ you is, let's just put aside whatever this 'thing' we've got going on between us is, and just focus on doing our jobs. At least until this crisis is over with. Think you can handle that?"

Amber stared at Shepard, and resisted the urge to let out a derisive snort. She couldn't help but note that while everything Shepard had said was good and all, Shepard was approaching this issue as if _Amber_ was the problem. Basically, Shepard was demanding Amber change her ways, without even recognizing the possibility that she herself might be part of the issue.

Regrettably for Amber, there wasn't much she could do about this situation, except nod her head and say, "Aye, Lieutenant."

Shepard nodded, as if that was what she had been expecting. Arrogantly lady. God. And she _still_ couldn't figure out why Amber disliked her.

"You heard about the Banshee kamikaze attacks?" Shepard was saying in the meantime.

"Aye, Lieutenant," Amber distractedly declared.

"Good. Then you probably also heard about the damage they did to this ship. How much, we're not sure yet, but it doesn't matter: we need everyone to go through their stations with a fine-tooth comb and make sure the _Gabrielle_ is one hundred percent ready for combat operations. One of the major components? The main battery. Captain Lancaster needs to know if his ship still has teeth. And since you're one of the few gunner's mates back onboard…"

Shepard trailed off and Amber couldn't help but throw a longing look around the compartment. So much for cleaning up.

"Get to work GM," Shepard finally said.

"We've got a war to fight."

 **XXXXX**

 **Staging Area, Outskirts of Newington, Actium  
May 7, 2545  
0053**

 **Sergeant Tariq Helmand**

The very sky seemed to rattle and shake as yet another Covenant warship descended through the atmosphere. Tariq automatically tensed and gripped his rifle just a bit tighter as he watched the ship soar through the air. Not that a single MA37 assault rifle could hope to do a thing against a ship that size, but the gesture was more for Tariq's comfort than any sort of attempt at protecting himself.

Fortunately, the ship only did what every other ship had done before it; that is to say, it turned and headed straight for the nearest city. Tariq and his friends were safe, for now. But at the rate those ships were working, it would only be a matter of time before they started heading in their direction. And once that happened, then everyone was fucked _._

"We can't do this. This is our job as soldiers."

Tariq turned back to the area where what was left of his battalion had gathered. Duvall was standing there with his arms crossed, looking stubborn.

"Look dude," Lavina snapped. "In case you haven't noticed, this planet has gone to hell in a handbasket. The chain of command is gone. We're free; we can do whatever the fuck we want."

Duvall stubbornly shook his head.

"This ain't right," he insisted.

Chenko raised his hand in a placating gesture.

"Dude, I get it," he said quietly. "I really do. It's the end of days and all that other shit. You wanna go down fighting. But think about it man: this is only one battle. War will still go on after this. So, let me ask you: what would serve humanity better in the long run? Us throwing away our lives, here and now? Or living to fight another day?"

"Fuck. You," Duvall growled. "That's not the issue at hand, and you know it. Stop moving the fucking goalpost around. In fact, Specialist, just shut the fuck up entirely. You don't get an opinion."

Chenko reared back like he'd been struck but before he could say anything, Shayan interjected.

"Hey! That's my fucking life you're talking about there! You wanna throw away yours, fine by me, but don't you fucking drag me down with you!"

"Jesus Christ Sergeant," Duvall hissed, disgust dripping with every word. "I always knew you were squirrelly, but fuck me, I had no idea you were also a spineless coward!"

Shayan immediately leapt to his feet.

"What'd you say to me you little bitch!?" he threatened.

"Oh, big man!" Duvall mocked. "Got the balls to face me, but not the fucking Covenant!"

"Guys, come on!" Chenko attempted to interject, but neither Duvall nor Shayan paid him any heed.

"You motherfucker! I will break you!" Shayan screeched.

"Well, come on then!"

Just as the two seemed ready to come to blows, Tariq felt something inside of him snap, and he surged to his feet. Grabbing a very startled Duvall by the back of his vest, Tariq shoved him hard against the wall.

"What the _hell_ Helmand," Duvall started to exclaim, but Tariq quickly cut him off.

"Shut the fuck up and listen to me," Tariq snapped. "You need to _wake the fuck up!_ Have you looked outside recently? I mean, seriously looked outside!? Look at the sky! You see how many Covenant ships are out there? You see any of ours? Come on dude!"

Releasing Duvall with a huff, Tariq took a step back, shaking his head.

"Draco III is _dead,_ " Tariq emphatically announced. "And I don't plan on joining it. And no one, _not even you_ , Sergeant, will get in my way. You understand me!?"

He suddenly cocked his head. He thought he had heard a noise…

Tariq's eyes snapped open as he instantly went from being asleep to full consciousness in a split second. Despite this, he did his best to keep his breathing steady to feign sleep as he listened.

Yep! Someone was definitely moving around just outside his pup tent. But no one was supposed to be awake right now…

Slowly, Tariq eased his hand out of his sleeping bag and snaked it up towards his pillow where his M7 submachine gun was stored. Grabbing a hold of the pistol grip and disabling the safety, Tariq waited as whoever was outside moved closer to the tent flap.

And… now.

The tent flap was suddenly ripped open and Tariq surged upright, SMG in hand and he was just about to pull the trigger when –

"WHOA! SERGEANT, ITS JUST ME!"

Tariq calmly re-engaged the safety but didn't lower his weapon as he stared at Corona, who was now cowering in the tent entrance.

"What the _fuck_ kid," Tariq growled. He glanced at his watch. "What the fuck are you doing scurrying around when we still got another thirty minutes to sleep?"

"There's gunfire outside," Corona cautiously reported as he lowered his hands.

"Yeah?" Tariq replied with a yawn. "In case you didn't know, there's a war going on. Of course you're going to hear gunfire."

"But… it's like, right outside the staging area," Corona said uncertainly. "Should fighting be taking place so close to the staging area?"

"Not directed at us, so what the fuck do I care?"

"But! Shouldn't we… do something?"

Tariq groaned and tossed his gun back onto his pillow. "Who the fuck is on guard duty?"

"Some MPs from the Colonial Militia, I think."

"Then let _them_ worry about it. We've still got -" Tariq checked his watch " – another twenty-minutes before we're supposed to be awake, and I'm sure as hell not going to waste it worrying about shit that's not even my problem."

"Man, I don't think I could even go back to sleep now," Corona nervously replied.

Tariq rolled his eyes.

"Fine." Reaching out to his backpack of stuff, which he had made sure to remove from the outside of the tank and store inside the tent so it wouldn't freeze overnight, he began digging around until he found his thermos and a box of plastic bags.

"If you're not going to sleep, then make yourself useful," Tariq demanded. "We're in the staging area: should be a mess tent around here somewhere. Go get some hot breakfast; I wanna avoid eating MREs for as long as possible. Fill this – " he lifted the thermos " – to the brim with coffee. Black! No sugar or creamer. Fill these – " he lifted the bags " – with coffee _powder."_

"But we don't have a kettle," Corona protested, even as he took the stuff in question. "What good will coffee powder do?"

Tariq snorted.

"Trust me kid: when shit starts to really hit the fan and Command starts having to choose between sending us ammo or sending us food, that shit will be worth more than _crack_. Now, fuck off."

Tariq promptly threw himself back into his sleeping bag, and waited for the sounds of Corona leaving before letting out a loud sigh. Despite everything he had just said, he didn't actually think he would be able to go back to sleep. Not after that dream he just had.

"Fuck," he groaned.

 **XXXXX**

 **Northern Byzas, Thracia Province, Actium  
May 7, 2545  
0113**

 **Private First Class Adel Savaschi**

Adel's armor rattled and shook as someone grabbed his shoulder and tried to wake him. Consciousness didn't come easy to the young Marine, at least not until he cracked open his eyes and saw Sam crouched right in front of him. It took a few moments for yesterday's events to come crashing down on him, but when it did, Adel started stirring.

"Sam?" Adel said between a yawn. "What's going on?"

"Get up," Sam demanded. "And grab your rifle. We're needed on the line."

That caught Adel's attention and he immediately climbed out of his sleeping bag. Rubbing his hands together because of the cold, he grabbed his rifle which was propped up against the wall nearby, and followed Sam as he led them out of the building they were billeted in, back towards the foxholes that made up the forward most positions of the UNSC forces. There, he found X, as well as Lieutenant Lancelot and the Marines that had been on guard duty, ready and at full alert. Standing with them, to Adel's mild surprise, was Sergeant Melvin Mobuto's scout sniper team from H&S Company.

"What's going on?" Adel whispered as he took up position next to X.

"Not sure," X whispered back. "I just got woken up like, two minutes ago."

Adel couldn't help but jump as the sound of mortars passing overhead suddenly filled the air. Fortunately it was outgoing, not incoming, but the noise still made Adel really nervous.

"Easy there Private," Lancelot quietly called out. "Those are ours: we've been sporadically firing mortars downrange most of the night, trying to get the Covenant used to the sound. I figure, another five minutes, we'll send another salvo during which you'll deploy."

He directed the last part towards Mobuto, who nodded.

"Aye, Lieutenant," he replied, before glancing in Adel's direction. "What's going on Adel? Hey man: heard you bagged your first kill yesterday. Congrats."

Adel was silent as last night's events came flooding back to him. In particular, the Jackal he had gunned down while the creature had been trying to infiltrate their lines. Despite having had a chance to sleep on the issue, Adel had to admit, he still wasn't sure how to feel about it all. Should he have felt excited? Satisfied? Or perhaps he should have been disgusted with himself? Granted, if given the chance, that Jackal would have no doubt gunned down Adel without hesitation so really, there was nothing wrong with what Adel had done.

But still, the fact that Adel had deliberately killed another living, breathing, sentient being for the first time in his life, just didn't quite sit well with him.

So rather than reply directly to Mobuto's comment, Adel instead decided to quickly change the subject.

"Hey Sergeant: what are you doing so far up in the front? Shouldn't you be hiding in a hole in rear with all the other queers?" Adel said with a smile, to show he was joking.

Even in the dim light, Adel could see Mobuto grinning back.

"Nah, man. Came to make sure you didn't get that donkey dick you call a rocket launcher stuck up your ass; I know how much you cannon cockers love taking it from behind," he shot back.

Behind him, Adel could hear X chortling ever so slightly at the amount of trash talk being thrown around, and Mobuto grinned before growing serious.

"No, seriously though: Command wants to know what the fuck the Covies are doing, so they're sending all the SS and recon teams out to set up shop. Just don't want the Covies to know we're coming, so we gotta wait a bit."

Adel couldn't help but shiver at that. The idea of trying to infiltrate no-man's land in order to set up an observation post deep behind enemy lines where friendly support was rather limited always made Adel nervous. Granted, he had done something like that last night, but it wasn't as if he had a choice then.

"That's kind of dangerous," Adel couldn't help but note.

A bloodthirsty grin slowly appeared on Mobuto's face.

"I know: it's great, ain't it?" he excitedly whispered back.

"Mortars are about to fire once more," Lancelot suddenly reported, bringing an immediate halt to all conversations. "All Marines, stand to! Don't know if Covies have eyes on us, so SS might start taking fire the moment they step off. Be ready."

Adel shivered, before lifting his rifle and pointing it downrange. All around him, all the other Marines, minus Mobuto and his spotter, did the same.

"Sergeant: standby," Lancelot whispered as the sound of the mortars passing by began to fill the sky. "Go, go, go!"

Mobuto and his spotter immediately hauled themselves out of the hole and took off as the mortars exploded somewhere randomly in the distance. Adel mentally braced himself, half expecting both Marines to immediately be cut down by plasma fire but instead, nothing happened, and he watched as the scout sniper team disappeared into the darkness.

"Standby," Lancelot commanded, his hand pressed against his radio. Adel nervously gripped his rifle as he realized they weren't done yet. "Hang on… and SS is out. Go ahead and stand down Marines."

Adel let out a quiet sigh of relief as he lowered his rifle. Honestly, Adel didn't think he was mentally ready for a firefight so early in the morning.

"Come on guys," Sam commanded, flicking the safety back on his rifle. "Let's go back. Lieutenant?"

"Corporal," Lancelot quietly replied, and Adel followed Sam as he led him and X back to their house.

"Shit," Sam dragged out as they walked back inside and he propped his rifle up against the wall beside his bag. "That was exciting. Well, let's just hope that'll be the most exciting thing to happen to us in the next few hours. We're not actually due to be up for another hour, so if you guys want to go back to sleep, now's the time to do it."

Adel shot Sam an incredulous look. How could Adel go back to sleep after something like that?

He turned to X to complain, but much to his surprise, X had already crawled back into his sack and by the sounds of it, was somehow fast asleep, leaving him to be the only one still standing there. Great.

Adel looked around, wondering what he was going to do now. Sleep was out of the question, but at the same time, he didn't really want to be awake either as he knew all he would be doing was thinking about that damn Jackal. And he didn't want to be doing that right now. He didn't want to be doing that _ever._

He let another sigh. Well, perhaps now would be a good time to clean his rifle again.

 **XXXXX**

 **Camp Hoxha, Thracia Province  
May 7, 2545  
0127**

 **Private Marcus Olsen**

The bed rattled and shook, causing Marcus to stir from his slumber. With a concerted effort, he wrenched his eyelids open, only to be confronted with a room that he did not recognize. He wasn't in his bedroom at his parent's house, as the walls weren't covered in college posters. Nor was he in the barracks at AIT, as there wasn't a bunk directly above him. Where the hell was he?

"Come on dude, get up. I'm not your damn mother: I will dump a bucket of water on your face if that's what it'll take."

With a bit of reluctance, Marcus rolled over to his side to see Orlović standing over him, already dressed. At once, the events of yesterday began to come back to Marcus. The fighting, all the resupply runs… the Covenant had invaded yesterday!

A surge of adrenaline flooded Marcus' veins as he suddenly remembered the big thing that had happened yesterday, and he quickly sat up.

"Aww," Orlović said, sounding disappointed. "I had a bucket ready and everything."

Marcus glanced at him in alarm. Sure enough, Orlović had a small, one liter bucket in hand, filled with water.

"I'm up, I'm up," Marcus quickly assured him. He didn't relax though until Orlović went ahead and put the bucket down.

Tossing the sheets away from him, Marcus reluctantly climbed out of bed, shivering slightly at the slightly cooler room. Glancing down at himself, he was surprised to see he was already dressed, but then he remembered he had passed out last night before he had a chance to change.

"Hey: those weren't the same clothes you were wearing all day yesterday, was it?" he heard Orlović call out from his side of the room.

"Uh… no!" Marcus automatically replied.

"Good. Last thing you want is to be catching hypothermia or pneumonia or some shit like that."

Marcus reached up to awkwardly scratch the back of his neck. Right…

"What time is it?" he asked, to try and change the subject.

"Oh-one-thirty? Something like that?"

That caught Marcus off-guard.

"Why do we need to be awake this early?" he couldn't help but exclaim. Orlović immediately straightened and turned around, an incredulous look on his face.

"Dude…" he slowly began. "There's a war going on. No such thing as 'early' or 'late' anymore. There's only 'we good' or 'oh shit, we're all going to die!' So, when Theo tells us to get up, we fucking get up."

"Sergeant Dresden?" Marcus echoed. "He called?"

"Sorta."

As if on cue, the door to the room abruptly opened, and Dresden came strolling in, a greasy looking bag in one hand, and a tray of steaming cups in the other.

"Morning men!" he announced, sounding entirely too cheerful for this hour. "Up and at 'em gents, up and at 'em. We got a long and busy day ahead of us, so we got to hit the ground running. Chop chop. Figured I'd save you guys some time so I grabbed breakfast. It's only mess hall food but hey! At least it's hot."

Marcus couldn't help but just stare at Dresden, shocked. How the hell was Dresden so awake right now? It was especially astounding as Marcus suddenly remembered he hadn't even gone to bed at the same time Marcus had, having opted to stay awake a bit longer in order to work on fixing their rig. Yet, even with less sleep, somehow he had so much more energy than Marcus did. It didn't seem right.

In the meantime though, Orlović had already walked over and grabbed one of the cups from Dresden. Popping the cap off, he took a sip before making a face.

"I don't suppose you…?" he started to ask, an almost pleading look on his face.

Marcus could see Dresden rolling his eyes before he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a handful of packs of sugar and creamer.

"Thanks," Orlović said as he all but grabbed the packs and began dumping them into his cup. He suddenly glanced up with a look of warning on his face. "I don't want to hear it, dude."

"Hey, I wasn't about to say anything," Dresden lightly protested. "If you want to drink your coffee like a pussy, then that's your prerogative. Me and Marcus? We're going to drink it like real men: so hot that it burns our taste buds so we don't realize how nasty this shit actually tastes. Right Marcus?"

Marcus jumped and couldn't help but feel guilty.

"Um. I actually _do_ drink my coffee straight black," he sheepishly admitted.

"Oh, do you?" Dresden commented conversationally. "Well, good for you then. Here, take this."

Marcus took the offered cup and took a sip, the caffeine immediately hitting him like a jolt of electricity.

"Wasn't sure what you guys would want, Marcus in particular 'cause we only just met, so I figured I'd get a little bit everything. Ah!" Dresden said, pulling the bag away as Orlović reached for it. "We'll eat in the Rig. Come on, we got to get ready."

"Why's that, sir?" Marcus couldn't help but ask. "What's the big rush? What are we doing today?"

"We are hauling every manner of artillery shells we can get our hands on," Dresden declared.

"What for?"

"Command's planning an offensive," Dresden replied. "We're gonna blow every single one of these fuckers to bits."

"And then? That's when the real battle begins."

Marcus stared in morbid fascination at the look that appeared on Dresden's face, and he shivered at how… excited he sounded. He didn't see Dresden acting like this _at all_ yesterday, so the change completely caught Marcus off guard. But then, just like a switch had been flicked, Dresden was back.

"But, only if we do our jobs properly," he said lightly. "So, that's why we gotta get moving. Come on guys!"

"We've got another _long_ day ahead of us."

 **XXXXX**

 **O'Neil Air Force Base, Actium  
May 7, 2545  
0147**

 **1st Lieutenant Link "Zelda" Kuang**

The cot rattled and shook as their occupants writhed across the top.

"Oh yeah baby, just like that," Zelda groaned as the beautiful blonde woman rode him like a pro.

"You like that?" the woman flirtatiously replied.

"Oh yeah," Zelda euphorically replied. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back with a groan. "You keep ridin' like that, I might just decide to keep you."

"Talkin' about the future already?" the woman replied with a laugh that almost made Zelda explode right then and there, but he resisted the urge.

"Don't you know it," he replied with a groan.

"How come I don't get a future."

Zelda jerked awake and launched himself upright. There, standing at the end of the bed just staring at him with a dead look, was Betros.

"What the…" Zelda frantically said, looking around. "Betros? Aren't you? I mean… didn't you… weren't you…"

"Dead?" Betros finished for him. "Yeah. I know. I was there. And so were you. You watched it happen. You… let it happen."

"What?" Zelda exclaimed, astonished. "No… No I didn't! Dude, your bird was fucked up! There wasn't anything I could do!"

"You're the best pilot in the entire AO," Betros snapped. "That's what you tell people, isn't it? You don't get to say that without accepting certain responsibilities. You should have seen it coming, you could have said something, _you let me die!"_

He suddenly surged forward and wrapped his hands around Zelda's neck, only now it wasn't Betros but a Covenant Brute.

"You are all worms," the Brute sneered. "And you will all burn!"

As he started choking, Zelda reached down to his waist, trying to grab his sidearm, only he couldn't quite reach it. It was just out of his reach, _just out of his reach_ …

Zelda lurched awake just as he started to fall out of his cot only he wasn't fast enough to catch himself. He hit the ground hard.

"Whoa! Are you alright dude?"

His face burning in embarrassment, Zelda looked up to see Omega-12, aka, 1st Lieutenant Mohammad "Skeeter" Astor staring at him with a concerned look on his face, and Zelda's embarrassment only deepened. Bad enough he had accidentally rolled out of his cot like he was a fucking toddler, but to have someone else witness it?

"Fuck off Skeeter!" Zelda reflexively snapped.

Skeeter reared back.

"Well _excuse_ me for trying to pretend to care," he angrily retorted, and a small part of Zelda couldn't help but feel guilty for having snapped at him, but at this point Zelda was too fired up to care.

"Yeah, well, nobody fucking asked you to!" he growled. "So leave me the fuck alone!"

"You know, this is why no fucking likes you Zelda: you're a goddamn prick."

"And you're nothing but a fucking bug," Zelda retorted. "Always sticking your nose in other people's business. Like a fucking 'Mo-Skeeter!'"

Skeeter angrily opened his mouth to retort, but seemed to think better of it as he instead agitatedly waved his hand before stalking off. Zelda watched him go, before picking himself off the ground and throwing himself back onto his cot. Reaching up, he rubbed his eyes.

What the fuck was that dream all about? A lesser man might have suggested that perhaps Zelda was feeling some guilt over the loss of his fellow squadron member, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Bertin Betros, who was the first pilot to be killed in action yesterday. But the thing was, Zelda wasn't one to feel guilty about stuff like that, especially things he had no control over. That's not to say he didn't feel bad about the loss of Betros – he had liked Betros, which was something he didn't say a lot about the people not only in his squadron, but his entire fighter wing. But there was no way Zelda even remotely bore responsibility for Betros' death.

Zelda groaned and leaned his head back as he tried to replay exactly how Betros had died. He had been killed very early on in the day, inside the rings of Tenedos. A Covenant CRS-class light cruiser had fired a single plasma cannon bolt, which had struck Betros in the wing, tearing it apart and sending Betros into a fatal spin, one he wasn't able to pull out of before he crashed into an asteroid. No one had seen the cruiser arrive and thus, they had no warning that the bolt had been coming. There was absolutely no way Zelda was at all responsible for Betros' death and therefore he felt no guilt over the entire incident.

Absolutely none.

…But then again, if there had been no warning, how was it that _Zelda_ had survived…

"Yo! You awake yet?"

Zelda quickly looked up at the sound of Odessa's voice.

"I'm awake," Zelda declared, doing his best to hide his internal conflict. "I've been awake: seriously, who can sleep with your fat ass snoring away like a fucking chainsaw man."

Odessa laughed appreciatively.

"Yeah, and here's me thinking you couldn't fall asleep without a little…" he thrusted his hips forward a couple of times. "What do all the ladies say you do? Three thrusts and you're out like a light? Come on man; that's some weak sauce right there."

Zelda absentmindedly flicked him off, but truth be told he wasn't paying attention. Odessa's talk of sex had inadvertently forced him to think about his dream again, and all the baggage that came with it, and Zelda was doing his best to suppress it.

Perhaps picking up on his mood, Odessa quickly grew serious.

"Anyways, I recommend getting some food Lieutenant: we're going to need it."

"Why? What's up?" Zelda asked as he climbed to his feet. Odessa stared at him.

"The Covenant, dude," he said as if that was the most obvious thing in the world. "We're going to hit back, duh. And you know what that means, don't you?"

Zelda shook his head.

Odessa shrugged.

"It means, dude, we're going to carpet bomb the shit out of them. So, let's go. We don't have a lot of time to get ready."

 **XXXXX**

 **Central Byzas, Thracia Province  
May 7, 2545  
0201**

 **Officer Selene Riddle**

The building rattled and shook, causing Selene to instantly snap awake. For a moment she laid there, beadily staring into the darkness, trying to figure out what was going on, when the building rattled again, proving that she wasn't dreaming after all.

Slowly, she reached into her blanket and pulled out her sidearm. As she did, she looked around the room. According to her watch, it was about two o'clock in the morning, which meant it was dark enough as it was. However, being inside a room without any electricity or lights meant it was completely pitch black, devoid of any sort of ambient light for Selene's eyes to pick up on. Nevertheless, she was still able to tell how very much alone she was at the moment.

Where the hell did Shin go?

Easing her stiff body off the ground, Selene brought her pistol up into a low-ready position. Wishing she had a pair of night vision goggles or even a flashlight, Selene slowly began walking around the room, trying to determine if Shin had been kidnapped or if he had left of his own accord. Or even less drastically, he was merely hiding in the shadows of one of the corners of the room.

However, after a few minutes of walking in circles, Selene was able to determine that Shin was nowhere to be found, and that if he'd been forcefully removed from the room, there was no indication.

Inhaling sharply through her nostrils, Selene did her best to remain calm. Just because Shin wasn't where she had last seen him, that didn't mean he was gone, gone. Perhaps he had merely left to go on another scavenging run? Though, Selene would have preferred that he had woken her to tell her that, instead of simply disappearing.

Then again, Selene was beginning to realize this was very much going to be a "thing" with him.

Figuring she might as well look around the building, on the off chance Shin left a note or something, Selene felt her way along the wall until she located the door. Easing it open, she couldn't help but flinch as a loud _creak_ filled the empty silence. Fortunately, the noise occurred at the exact same time the building shook once more, so she doubted anyone further than a meter away from the room would have heard the noise. Though it did raise another question: what the hell was causing all that shaking?

Deciding that was a mystery to be solved after she found out what happened to Shin, Selene lightly shoved the door open all the way and cautiously walked into the hallway.

Outside, there wasn't that much more light, however given the confines of the hallway versus the room she had just vacated, there was a lot less area she had to cover, so Selene wasn't too bothered by it. What she did have to figure out though, was which way to start her search.

"If I was Shin," she whispered to herself, "where would I go?"

The building shook once more, causing a small pile of dust to fall onto her shoulders, and it suddenly occurred to her that perhaps Shin had been woken up by the same rattling as Selene had. And if that was the case, then perhaps he had gone to find out what the source of all the shaking and rattling was? But she didn't think he was stupid enough or crazy enough to simply walk outside where anyone could see from. Which meant he probably went to go find a window. Which meant finding a room that had a window facing the direction of the most likely source of the noise.

Turning left, she slowly walked down the hall, doing her best to keep quiet just in case it wasn't just her and Shin in the building. Reaching the room at the end of the hall, she stopped and squinted at the door, as if she had somehow magically acquired x-ray vision overnight.

As it turned out, no she hadn't, but after several minutes of straining, Selene eventually realized that the door was actually cracked open slightly, as if someone had gone through recently.

Bingo.

Selene started to reach for the doorknob, but then paused. To be fair, she actually couldn't remember if this door had been closed beforehand, or if it had always been cracked open like this. But then again, did it really matter?

Nevertheless, Selene brought her pistol up into a low-ready position as she reached out with her other hand and carefully pushed the door open.

Almost immediately, her eyes were drawn to the figure silhouetted in the small window that was overlooking the street below, and Selene automatically snapped her sidearm up.

"Police! Freeze!" Selene reflexively started to say, but at the last second, suddenly remembered what her situation was. Though she wasn't able to stop the words from tumbling out of her voice, at the very least, she was able to smoothen herself down to a whisper.

The figure at the window jumped, and whirled around, and the movement nearly caused Selene to instinctively shoot him, and she would have if it weren't for the fact the figure immediately began hissing:

"Whoa! Riddle, it's me!"

Selene hurriedly lowered her pistol so that the muzzle was pointing straight down at the floor as she recognized Shin's voice. Still, for some reason, something made her hesitate.

"Shin?" she whispered back in the hopes of getting a confirmation.

"Yeah. Who the _fuck_ else do you think it could be?" the figure irritably demanded as he lowered his hands and walked forward, close enough that Selene was finally able to make out Shin's face in the dim light, thus confirming his identity.

Selene slowly let out a sigh of relief as she finally put her pistol away.

"Sorry," was all she said. "Had to make sure."

She could see Shin shaking his head.

"Shit. Woman, has anyone ever told you, you are wired fucking tight?"

A wave of annoyance instantly surged through Selene.

"We're sitting in the middle of an alien invasion dude," she snapped back. "I had to be sure."

"Yeah, whatever," Shin said dismissively, which only served to add fuel to Selene's anger, but before she could say anything else, Shin gestured for her to come join him at the window. "Come here. You need to see this."

Her irritation pausing at the sudden change of topic, Selene did as she was told, walking across the room to the window to look outside.

"What am I looking at?" she asked as she took in the sights. As expected, it was pretty dark outside; not as dark as it was inside due to the ambient light being reflected off the snow-filled clouds overhead, but dark enough that she wasn't able to instantly pick out what Shin was looking at.

"Wait for it…" Shin whispered.

Selene was about to ask, but before she could, there was a purple flash from somewhere deeper in the city. Almost at the exact same time, the building rattled and shook once more.

"What the hell was that?" Selene exclaimed, her anger forgotten in the face of this new mystery.

Beside her, she could feel Shin shrugging.

"Hard to say, but best guess? Covenant demolition charge."

"'Demolition charge?'" Selene echoed. "They're blowing up the city!?"

Shin snorted. "If they wanted to destroy the entire city, they would glass it. No, what they're probably doing is only blowing up a number of select buildings."

"Why?"

"They're digging in," Shin grimly proclaimed. "We need to leave. Now."

"What?"

Selene was completely caught off guard by both the sudden change in subject, as well as Shin abruptly pulling away from the window and walking back towards the hallway. She hurriedly moved to catch up.

"What's going on Shin?" Selene demanded to know. "Why do we need to leave?"

"The Covenant are digging in," Shin explained without breaking stride. "Which means they're expecting a counterattack. You know how the UNSC starts a counterattack? By paving a twelve lane highway using high altitude bombers and massed artillery. They're going to level this entire area with high explosives to bury the Covenant alive, then roll over their graves with tanks. And _**we**_ just happen to be sitting in the middle of the dartboard."

"We need to get back underground. Now. Before it's too late."

 **XXXXX**

 **Covenant designated Landing Zone: Deliverance  
Forerunner Designated World: MS 222-53 a  
9th Age of Reclamation  
1st Planet Cycle**

 **Minor Zek**

The vehicle rattled and shook as it strained to pull its load. Zek growled as he fought to keep it under control. It was stupid, but to be fair, he _was_ trying to use this vehicle in ways that it was never designed to be used.

An attack was coming. Zek may have only been a security technician, but one didn't need to be a matriarch in order to figure that out. The moment the Fleet and the Legions had ceased their attack, and thus surrendered control of the initiative, was the moment everyone knew the humans were going to launch a counterattack. The only question remained: how big was the attack going to be and when was it going to take place?

For those questions, Zek would leave it to Fleetmaster 'Oteree to answer. What Zek needed to figure out was how he was going to survive the upcoming onslaught.

After Fleetmaster 'Oteree returned to orbit, much of the Covenant fleet had retreated from their position over the city. Meanwhile, back on the surface, Evocatus 'Quetshadee, commander of landing zone Deliverance and current commander of all Covenant Legions on the colony – at least until a proper Zealot and ground commander could arrive – had decided to withdraw all armored vehicles to the center of Deliverance in order to preserve them from the upcoming attack. As a result, regular soldiers like Zek and his comrades had essentially been left to figure out on their own how they could survive the coming wave.

Fortunately, when the humans had withdrawn from this part of the city, they'd left behind all manner of building material and vehicles. Most of the vehicles were clearly intended for civilian usage, as they were but lightly armored and would do little to stop a bullet; however, Zek had realized that if enough of them were pushed together, they would at least provide acceptable levels of protection against the likes of shrapnel, of which there was undoubtedly going to be a surplus of in the coming cycles.

The key, however, was attempting to push said vehicles together, hence Zek's current struggle.

"Vittu!" he screeched as the vehicle abruptly slipped and nearly flipped over with him still in the seat.

"Brother Zek… are you well?"

Zek's head snapped in the direction of the speaker. There, standing nearby, was Ziik, the T'vaoan that Zek had met while at Firebase Reformation. Zek didn't know when Ziik had joined them in this sector of the city, but apparently he had at some point as he was currently standing just off to the side, watching Zek work with a small look of concern on his face.

"YES, I AM FINE!" Zek all but shouted in response. "Why would you think otherwise!?"

"Perhaps because you are attempting to use a Type-32 as a cargo trawler?" Ziik suggested.

Zek glanced down.

Due to the weight of the civilian vehicles which made it difficult for Zek to move around, Zek had decided to go looking for alternative methods of pushing the vehicles around. During his search, he had stumbled across a slightly damaged Covenant Type-32 Rapid Attack Vehicle. Used for reconnaissance and skirmishing, Type-32s were never designed to haul heavy cargo around. Nor were they even designed to be used by Kig-Yar as they were designed for usage by the Sangheili, and the morphology of the two races was so different that Zek wasn't even able to properly sit in the driver's seat of the vehicle.

Nevertheless, with no alternatives available and limited time, Zek had commandeered the Type-32 and tied a couple of human vehicles to the back in order to move them into a more optimal position. However, much to his annoyance, said task had proven to be far more difficult than he had anticipated. Hence his growing frustration.

"HOW ELSE AM I TO MOVE THESE CURSED VEHICLES IF NOT WITH THIS!?" Zek angrily demanded.

Ziik cocked his head.

"Perhaps you should have ensured the human vehicles have been placed in the proper gear before attempting to utilize the Type-32 in such a manner?" he suggested, not at all intimidated by Zek's anger.

" _ **I**_ – what?" Zek stammered.

Ziik gave a toothy grin, before walking over to one of the human vehicles. In the dim light caused by the glow from the anti-gravity engines of the Type-32, Zek watched as he reached into the human vehicle, grabbed a handle sticking out from the side of the steering wheel, and pulled it downwards. Almost immediately, the wheels on the human vehicle began to turn, and all resistance disappeared.

"You need to unlock the wheels on the human vessels," Ziik explained. "Otherwise, you are dragging them along, instead of wheeling them along."

Instead of placating Zek's anger, all Ziik's explanation did was cause him to become even more agitated.

"FINE!" Zek yelled as he climbed out of the seat in a huff. "If you're so smart, then you do it!"

Ziik gestured indifferently before climbing into the Type-32. Almost immediately, the Type-32 and the human vehicles began rolling down the street without any of the resistance Zek had been experiencing moments ago, and leaving him feeling slightly foolish.

"Stupid T'vaoans, always have to be better than every other Kig-Yar," Zek grumbled under his breath as he stalked over to where he had left his weapons. Grabbing his Type-51, he began cleaning off all the snow and dirt that covered the housing, trying his best not to think about what was undoubtedly going to occur in a few cycles.

"Zek, does this pavise go on the left arm or the right? I can never remember."

Zek automatically looked up at the question, only to see Rezan standing there, fumbling with an energy pavise as he attempted to figure out which forearm it needed to be attached to.

"Attach it to the arm that has been injured, so that you may still be able to fire your weapon," Zek snapped, as if it were the most obvious solution in the world.

Rezan jumped and looked startled as he stared at his wounded hand, as if noticing it for the first time.

"Oh…" Rezan said sadly. "Of course."

At that, Zek couldn't help but feel guilty for snapping at his friend, and at once, all of his anger seemed to dissipate.

"Come here," he demanded, before reaching up to try and help his friend properly equip himself.

"I can't believe the Shipmaster refused to allow you to be evacuated off this world," Zek grumbled out loud as he worked. "You are wounded! You should not be fighting."

He could feel Rezan gesturing indifferently.

"I merely lost usage of my hand, Zek, not my entire arm," Rezan pointed out. "I can still hold a sidearm, if not a service weapon. And the Legions will need as many soldiers as they possibly can get in order to withstand the coming storm. At least I can provide you with some cover with this pavise."

He gestured at the inactive energy shield Zek had just finished strapping to his forearm and Zek squawked in acknowledgement, doing his best not to start at Rezan's damaged hand. Back at the Firebase Reformation, they had been attacked, and in the ensuing firefight, Rezan's finger had been shot off, leaving his hand bloodied and scarred.

"Well, stay close to me: I'll watch over you," Zek commanded.

"We'll watch each other," Rezan corrected. "After all, once this attack begins, the only people we will be able to depend on are our Brothers standing next to us on the line, as well as the blessing of the Gods."

Zek tried not to shiver at the thought. He knew what Rezan was talking about. Despite having never experienced an attack similar to the one that was undoubtedly coming, Zek had seen the videos and he knew what to expect. When the humans attacked, it would begin with hundreds and hundreds of aircraft, all of which would drop their bombs and other explosives. Once they were finished, then would come the human mortars. In a few cycles, this entire sector would be naught be craters, blasted buildings, and destroyed vehicles.

"We better keep working," Zek urged as he glanced at the sky. It was still dark. Good. That meant the attack had yet to come. But it would.

He could feel it.

* * *

Footnotes

 **1\. Colonial Military Administration:** I realized that in official canon, the Colonial Military Administration, or the CMA, has mostly been dissolved by 2545, with most of its ships and assets being handed over to the UNSC. That being said, I always pictured the CMA as kind of holding a similar status to the way the United States Coast Guard works in real-life, with the Coast Guard officially being a military branch and falling under the Department of the Navy (and subsequently, the Department of Defense,) however during peacetime it falls under the Department of Homeland Security. I kind of figured a similar situation would have developed with the CMA.

So basically, during peace, the CMA would report directly to the United Earth Government, however during times of war (such as the Insurrection or the Human-Covenant War,) the CMA would instead report to the UNSC, with most of its assets being used to augment the UNSC Navy's active fleet. However, I don't foresee _all_ of CMA's assets going to the Navy, and one of the major roles I see the CMA holding during the war would be refugee management: after all, every time a colony gets invaded by the Covenant, the UNSC immediately begins evacuation procedures. But just because all these people are offworld, doesn't mean they're safe, which is where I see CMA stepping in: using whatever small ships they have left (probably corvettes, light frigates, and maybe a couple of outdated destroyers like the _Diligence-_ class and the _Hillsborough_ -class,) they would provide armed protection for these massive refugee convoys while the Navy would focus on taking the fight directly against the Covenant.

So yeah, in summary of how I view most of the Colonial assets and what their real-world counterparts would be (including the CMA and the Colonial Militia) :

Colonial Military Administration (CMA) = United States Coast Guard

Colonial Militia = United States National Guard

Various Colonial Navies = United States Merchant Marines

2\. **SEALs:** I have a long and lengthy explanation for how I imagine both the UNSC "Special Operations Command" (UNSCSOCOM) and "Joint Special Operations Command" (JSOC) would be organized, from the names of the units each military branch would have contributed, to what roles and responsibilities they would have, and even what "tiers" each unit would occupy. However, I'm saving all that for my other fanfic, _Barracuda_ , as those units are the main subject of that story.

The short explanation for this story, however, is that "SEALs" are just the nickname for the UNSC Navy's "tier one" non-Spartan special forces unit.

 **Author's Notes**

A couple of general notes before we end the chapter:

\- **Updates:** I'm going back to my original schedule of updating one chapter every two weeks. At the end of Book 1, I was doing an update once a week, however that was a schedule that was really hard to maintain, so I'm not going to do that unless I'm somehow able to build up a large reserve of chapters.

\- **Pacing** : as with the beginning of Book 1, this book is going to start off a bit slow as our characters get themselves geared up for the fighting ahead. I realize that non-action has kind of the theme for my Halo stories in the last few months, and most of my readers are probably interested in jumping back into the action, which will happen, but not for another four chapters at least. So, I can only ask people to be just a bit more patient.

\- **Edits:** over the last few months of hiatus, I've been doing some editing of Book 1. Most of it has been administrative things like grammar and spelling errors, but some of it has actually been headcanon and plot stuff like adopting a more uniformed pattern to unit names, changing of commands, etc.

Most of the changes shouldn't affect anything too much, but I have three changes that are somewhat noticeable:

= I've changed the reason for Admiral Spaatz's being on the UNSC _Kilkis_. Instead of being his flagship, I've changed it so that Spaatz was only on the ship because he was in the middle of inspecting it when the Covenant invasion fleet arrived, it was just more efficient for him to stay onboard the ship than waste time returning to his headquarters on Heliopolis Station.

= I think I've finally dropped the last vestiges of Kanin's original stupid accent that I had been trying to do at the beginning of the story.

= Specific for chapter 18, I've dropped the idea of Air Force gunships and changed them to Longsword interceptors. I originally had an idea for Air Force gunships, but in the end, they just didn't quite work out the way I had thought they would, and it was just easier to use something that was already established in canon.

It should be noted that in that chapter, the Longswords are intended to be the larger versions normally used by the Navy (the C709 Longsword variant.)


	37. Chapter 37

Thanks for all the reviews guys, glad to see you're all as excited as I am to have _Battle: Actium_ return!

Thor, you and I appear to be of similar minds, though we differ slightly. I had a "chart" written up with my thoughts, which I had been saving for my other story, but I'll go ahead and post here so everyone can kind of see what I'm thinking (at the end of the chapter.)

As for this chapter, well, originally, I had intended this to be two chapters, however, given that entire chapter is just one giant info dump, I decided to combine them and make it one large chapter; that way, we can get through it relatively quicker.

* * *

 **Chapter 37**

 **High Orbit, Actium  
May 7, 2545  
0152**

 **Lieutenant General Athena Miles**

The D96-TCE "Albatross" heavy dropship rattled and shook as it made its descent through the atmosphere, causing some of the Marines onboard to look up in alarm. Lieutenant General Athena Miles was not one of them. As commander of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Force, Athena had cut her teeth leading combat Marines into battle during the early Insurrectionist days, many of which had been conducted under heavy fire; after all that, what was a little turbulence when compared to flak so thick, one could walk across it?

Instead, she continued to focus on the debriefing she was currently receiving from one of her subordinates.

" _The city of Byzas falls within the area of responsibility of the Army's 53rd Armored Division,_ " her subordinate, Colonel Qasim Ghaani was saying. As commander of the 88th MEU, the only one of Athena's units to be able to make it into the city yesterday, what he had to say could prove to be invaluable to Athena's understanding of the situation as it stood at the moment. _"As such, any units that got deployed to the city instantly fell under their command: Colonial Militia, Provincial Militia, other Army divisions… even us. The moment we arrived on the surface, my Marines were deployed to where they were needed most; essentially, we were being used to help plug in the holes that had formed in the Army's defensive line. As a result, there is no concentration of any Marine unit larger than company-size anywhere in this city."_

" _As for the Army, it's a clusterfuck down here, to put it bluntly, ma'am. Actium is the garrison planet of the 53rd AD, and they were in the midst of resting and refitting when the Covenant attacked. As such, a lot of the units they have listed on their official TO &E either don't exist, or simply weren't in position when the Covenant made landfall. So, while the Army was able to form a rough defensive line across the entire city, a lot of that is ad hoc; as far as I can tell, there is no coherent command or control higher than battalion level. Regimental, brigade, or even divisional command: none of that seems to exist right now. Fact of the matter is, I'm not even entirely sure _**who** _is overall in charge of this city's defense."_

"Then who made the decision to cease further landing of reinforcements into the city?" Athena demanded to know.

" _Deputy Commander of the 53rd, Brigadier General Lysander. Though he did so at_ _ **my**_ _urging: the last thing we needed was for more Marines to get dumped into this fucking mess and add to the confusion. With all due respect, ma'am, I don't want any more fucking reinforcements, at least, not until we, at bare minimum, have some sort of coherent chain of command. It's gonna suck for the men and women holding on at the front, but they're just going to have to deal with the situation with the resources they have on hand."_

"You did the right thing, Colonel," Athena assured him. "There's no point in deploying any more elements of 9MEF, at least not until we can be assured they'll be utilized properly. Which they will be: as of thirty minutes ago, **I've** been appointed commanding officer of the entire northern flank, which will include the defense of the city. That's why, the moment I establish my HQ on the northern edge of the city, I want the highest ranking Army officer to report to me immediately, this uh… General Lysander. Or whomever he's reporting to."

" _Well, I do believe he's currently reporting directly to NORTHCOM, so he's currently the highest-ranking officer_ on the ground. _With that being said, ma'am, I'll be sure to inform him of your orders as soon as we're finished here."_

"You do that," Athena agreed. "Rest assured, Colonel, order **will** be restored shortly after my arrival. Now, let's move onto the other elephant in the room: the Covenant. What do we know about them right now, and how are they responding to the situation?"

Ghaani sighed.

" _Well, ma'am, I have to give it to the Army at least,"_ he admitted. _"While they apparently don't know how to run a war from the divisional level or higher, ironically enough, their tactics at the small-unit level are on fucking point. As soon as the Covenant made landfall, every single Army unit, from the battalion level, all the way down to the individual fireteam, immediately launched a counterattack, hitting the Covenant with everything they had. Part of the reason why there're so many fucking holes in the line was because too many Army units got wiped out trying to attack Covenant forces head-on. The upside is, the attacks badly disrupted the Covenant's command structure, preventing them from really getting a footing. As far as my S-2 can tell, the Covies are as confused as we are."_

" _Furthermore, there appears to have been some sort of…"_ Ghaani hesitated. _"Hell, I don't even know what to call it: situation? Disruption? Event? About midday, I started receiving reports that a large chunk of the Covenant forces had broken off their attack in order to go searching for something inside the occupied sections of the city. What they were looking for and to what extent they spent looking for it, I don't know, but it certainly helped disrupt their momentum. The search appears to have been called off for now, but rather than continue their attack, the Covenant have settled down into defensive positions. It's been mostly quiet all night, aside from the occasional infiltration attempts and artillery duels."_

" _As to what they're doing, I gave orders for all scout sniper and recon elements to deploy earlier this morning, plus the Air Force has been running recon flights all night and into this morning. Intelligence is streaming in and MCIA has worked closely with ONI to process it all, though if it's alright with you ma'am, I'd rather wait until you're on the ground before presenting it to you."_

Athena looked up as her senior enlisted advisor, Sergeant Major Brian Osterman III, held up a small holographic note that simply said, 'Landfall, 5 mins.'

"We're about to make landfall," Athena reported over the radio as she nodded her thanks to Osterman. "We'll discuss this further once that happens; in the meantime, have General Lysander prepared to report to me in fifteen minutes. That is all."

" _Aye, aye, General. I'll see you on the ground. Out."_

Athena calmly put away her radio and made sure she was fully strapped in as she felt the power in the Albatross' engines begin to surge as they began their final approach to the landing zone. She made sure to switch her headset back over to the channel the pilots were using to communicate; however, she wasn't paying attention to a word they were saying as her mind was too preoccupied with everything she needed to do the moment she hit the ground.

Her first priority was to get her headquarters up and running as soon as possible; given everything Ghaani had just told her, having a command center where all communications could be routed through and where decisions could be made would make a world of difference in the coordination and reorganization of the various units deployed inside the city right now. And reorganization of everyone under her command would be especially important, given that she knew for a fact that the commanding officer of UNSC forces in the system, Admiral Lukas Spaatz, was pushing for the ground units to begin a counterattack almost immediately, while the Covenant were still at their weakest.

" _Attention all crew and passengers: we are one minute to touchdown."_

The pilot's voice cut through Athena's thoughts and she looked up as the sound of the landing gear getting deployed filled the air. Nodding to herself, she began checking the area around her, making sure she had all her stuff as everyone around her did the same. She could feel the dropship rapidly decelerating and it wasn't long before the pilot's voice returned over the intercom, saying:

" _Landing in three… two… one… touchdown!"_

The ship trembled slightly as it settled onto the ground. Almost immediately, Athena undid her restraints and climbed to her feet, making sure to grab her BR-55 battle rifle that was mounted in the rack next to her. Technically, as a lieutenant general, Athena had no need for a rifle as the chances of her seeing combat were slim to none. However, her possession of a rifle was more symbolic than anything; a reminder not just to herself, but also to her staff, that they were all Marines. And that no matter who they were, what position they held, or how high up the chain of command they sat; _**all**_ Marines were, first and foremost, riflemen. And they had to be ready to fight for their lives if the need ever came.

For now however, there would be no fighting needed as they were still some ways away from the front. As the ramp lowered, Athena took a deep breath, then confidently marched off the ship and took her first step onto the surface of Actium.

The first thing that struck her was the cold. According to weather reports Athena had reviewed before leaving orbit, it was the middle of winter on this hemisphere of the planet. As such, this early in the morning it was almost negative ten degrees Celsius. Even with the winterized jacket she was wearing, Athena had to fight the urge to shiver from the cold. As petty as it sounded, Athena knew given the chaos on the ground, she couldn't afford to show any weakness.

The second thing that Athena noticed was that the sound of artillery firing in the distance filled the air. It was heavy stuff too, 155mm or 203mm, or even a combination of the two. It must have been Army batteries; she didn't think any of her heavy artillery units had made it to the surface just yet. Who, what, or where they were firing at she didn't know, but as long as they were shooting in the direction of the Covenant she found she didn't really care. It just went to show: while the fighting may have slowed for the night, it hadn't completely ended.

Then there were the sights. The combined might of the UNSC Army, Marine Corps, and various militia groups had managed to stop the Covenant before they were able to reach this far north, so the damage wrecked was nowhere near comparable to the devastation that the southern half of the city had undoubtedly seen, but even then it was clear to her this sector of the city had undergone minor artillery and aerial bombardment. The damage was mostly cosmetic – destroyed windows, the occasional bits of shrapnel pockmarking some of the walls – but it was there.

Finally, there was the smell. The heavy scent of gunpowder and ozone wafted up on the breeze coming from the south. Along with it came the aroma of blood, fear, and death. If Athena hadn't known this entire area was one giant warzone before arriving here, then the scent alone would have been enough to inform her of that fact. If there was one thing Athena had learned over her many years of service, it was that while the sights and sounds may have varied depending on location and who was conducting the fighting, the smells of battle always remained the same.

Athena took a moment to allow her brain to process all the information her senses were giving her before turning her focus to the task at hand and looking around. Standing near the edge of the landing pad were two figures, and even in the dim light cast by the engines of the Albatross, Athena could recognize one of them, while the other she did not. The figure she recognized was her chief of staff, Colonel Chantin Pasang, who she had sent planetside several hours ago in order to establish a headquarters for her. The other, however, was very clearly a civilian as he was wearing a full business suit and tie, complete with some sort of metal pin attached to his lapel.

Curious, Athena headed in their direction.

"General Miles: welcome to Byzas," Pasang announced, snapping to attention as Athena approached.

"Colonel," Athena replied in greeting before turning her attention to the civilian. "Who the hell is this?"

Before Pasang could say a word, the civilian immediately spoke up.

"General Miles," he began, and immediately Athena could tell he was some sort of politician, based on the oily way he spoke. "Allow me to introduce myself: my name is Benito Garibaldi. The good people of this city saw it fit to elect _me_ , as their mayor last year, a position which I hold in – "

"Uh-huh," Athena immediately interrupted. "What do you want?"

Garibaldi looked startled at Athena's bluntness, but recovered quickly. Standing up straighter, he quickly adjusted his tie before announcing in an official tone: "General Miles. On behalf of the city of Byzas, as well as her citizens, I wish to extend a full-hearted thank you to you and your Marines for their service in protecting this great city. As a token of our appreciation, my cabinet and I are prepared to do whatever you need of us in order to aid in your defense of this fine city. Anything you need, General, you need only ask."

Athena raised an eyebrow.

"'Anything?'" she repeated.

"Anything," Garibaldi confirmed.

"Good. Then I want you to take your family, as well as whatever remains of your cabinet, and get into that Albatross," she pointed to the aircraft she just departed from, "and leave the planet."

Garibaldi looked shocked.

"But… General…" he began to protest, but Athena swiftly cut him off.

"Mayor Garibaldi, I appreciate what you're trying to do here, but this is a military matter, and this entire colony is under direct UNSC control," Athena explained. "As such, I don't need you, or any other politician for that matter, to authorize anything: I already have all the authority I need. What I don't need, is a bunch of civilians getting in my way. So, if you would be so kind, sir, Captain Knight here will ensure you are able to evacuate the colony safely."

Garibaldi looked uncertain.

"General," he began, "but with all due respect, I was former UNSC Navy, and I know the captain is always the last to leave the ship."

"A very noble sentiment, sir, but one that is unfortunately misplaced," Athena informed him. "Fact of the matter is, you're a civilian now, and you will better serve the UNSC by _not_ being here. Captain Knight?"

The commanding officer of her security component, Captain Knight, took a step forward. "Sir? If you would follow me?"

Looking simultaneously worried and relieved, Garibaldi nevertheless didn't resist as Knight led him away back towards the Albatross.

"Apologies, ma'am," Pasang said to Athena as soon as Garibaldi was out of earshot. "He was already standing here by the time I arrived."

"Hmm?" Athena distractedly replied, her meeting with Garibaldi having already been pushed out of her mind. "Oh, that. No matter. What's our status, Colonel?"

Pasang straightened. "Headquarters is up and running already. Colonel Savage is waiting for you in the command center. If you'll follow me, ma'am?"

Athena nodded and followed Pasang as she led them across the landing pad and towards one of the buildings that sat nearby. In a past life, it had clearly been some sort of police station. However, since the Marines had moved in, the entire facility had been transformed into a fortress. Marine engineers and Navy Seabees had worked on reinforcing the building with all sorts of sandbags, Hesco barriers, razor wire, and metal gun shields; to the point the building would be able to withstand several direct hits from artillery or aerial bombs. Meanwhile, Marine network systems specialists had spent the time adding onto the station's already extensive communications and surveillance gear, as to allow Athena uninterrupted transmissions to her troops on the frontline. At the same time, a number of AA batteries had been established on the rooftops of the buildings surrounding her command center, while Marine military police officers stood guard at every entrance, rifles and machine guns at the ready, prepared to defend the headquarters with their lives if need be. All in all, it was clear this station was about as ready as it was ever going to be for anything.

Marching in straight through the front doors with the rest of her staff in tow, Athena took a moment to remove her helmet before continuing down the corridor, passing through various checkpoints, all without once stopping. She followed Pasang as she lead the procession towards the center of the building which, based on the amount of cables running across the ground, was where her command and control center had been established. The doors leading to that room were guarded by an entire squad of twelve Marines, commanded by a single staff sergeant, all of whom immediately snapped to attention before reaching out and opening the doors for her.

"OFFICER ON DECK!" someone yelled out and Athena could hear everyone immediately leaping to their feet and snapping to attention as she came strolling into the room.

"As you were!" Athena barked, and her Marines quickly relaxed, allowing her to take a look around the room.

Clearly, this room had once been the central dispatch center for this precinct, as the walls and floor had already been covered in screens, displays, and radios. However, after the Marines had moved in, the room had been filled to the brim with electronics and other devices: holographic screens, massive radios to communicate with the fleet in orbit, live satellite coverage, maps, tactical displays, et cetera. Basically, everything and anything Athena would or could need to help her run this war.

Monitoring all this information was a veritable army of Marine and Navy technicians. Sitting at their stations with their officers hovering behind them nearby, they watched and listened. Likewise, yet more technicians worked on processing the vast amount of intelligence streaming in, dissecting and disseminating it in such a manner that Athena would be able to use it to make tactical and strategic decisions later.

Standing amid all this barely-controlled chaos, was the commanding officer of her headquarters group, Colonel Evan Savage.

"Ma'am," he greeted with an incline of his head as Athena walked up to him.

"Colonel," she replied. "What's our status?"

"We're green across the board," he reported. "Command center has been secured, and all stations are currently up and running."

Reaching out, Savage grabbed a couple of data pads that had been sitting on a nearby desk and handed them over to her.

"Latest SIG and SAT intelligence on current Covenant positions and composition," he explained. "Compliments of Colonel Ghaani. Also, as requested, ma'am, casualty reports from the UNSC Army, Air Force, and various Colonial Militias."

Athena nodded as she took the offered data pads and took a quick glance at the casualty listings. Listing every single casualty the UNSC had taken in this city alone in the last thirty-six hours by name, it had also been color-coordinated for her convenience, with yellow representing those that had been wounded in action, orange representing those that were missing in action, and red representing those that had been killed in action.

There was a lot of red.

"Thank you for this, Colonel," Athena said as she lowered the pad and glanced at Savage. "What's our status out in the field?"

Savage shook his head.

"Still a cluster, ma'am. Situation hasn't quite been able to pull itself together since you and Colonel Ghaani spoke over the radio ten minutes ago." Savage paused, before leaning in close. "If you don't mind me saying, ma'am, based on everything I've seen so far, it looks like you're going to have your work cut out for you."

Athena mentally sighed.

"Well, that's what we're here for," she declared.

"Let's get to work!"

 **xxx**

Fifteen minutes later, Athena found herself sitting alone in the small office that had been established for her, knee-deep in paperwork.

" _...Norbert, Butz G. Warrant Officer. 3rd Squadron, 300th Air Cavalry Regiment, Combat Aviation Brigade, 53rd Armored Division, UNSC Army: KIA. Noreen, Benjamin. Staff Sergeant. 5th Battalion, 42nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment, Thracia Army: KIA. Norén, Lisbeth. Specialist. 131st Engineer Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 222nd Airborne Division, UNSC Army: MIA..._

 _ **KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK**_

Athena reached out and paused her data pad at the sound of someone knocking on her door. She'd been studying the Army's casualty list, trying to figure out exactly what she was working with, and the amount of casualties the UNSC Army had taken in less than one day of combat was staggering. It was no wonder they had needed the Marine Corps to come in and reinforce their position.

"Enter!" she called out, and the door opened to reveal Pasang.

"General Miles," Pasang began, "a Brigadier General Lysander, UNSC Army, here to see you ma'am."

"Send him in," Athena commanded, and Pasang opened the door fully to reveal a man wearing the battle dress uniform of the UNSC Army standing on the other side. At Pasang's nod, the Soldier smartly marched into the room and as the door firmly shut behind him, the Soldier snapped to attention and fired off a sharp salute.

"Ma'am, Brigadier General Janus Lysander reporting as ordered," he barked. Athena calmly returned the salute.

"At ease, General," she ordered and Lysander immediately assumed an 'at ease' stance, allowing Athena the chance to study the man standing in front of her in detail.

Lysander was an older gentleman, probably in his late fifties or early sixties, though it was hard to tell nowadays due to modern medicine allowing general-grade officers to serve far longer than they historically were able to. His salt and pepper hair was cut short in a high and tight style, as per UNSC military regulations; however, contrasting his meticulously maintained scalp was the five o'clock shadow he had on his chin, giving him a sort of rugged and "salty-veteran" look. Which, Athena figured, was probably the point.

To add to the accoutrement, much like everyone else around Athena's command center, Lysander was clad in a set of body armor, but not completely: while he had his vest on, he was missing his pauldrons, his lower body armor, had on a set of tanker boots instead of the standard armored combat boots that was typical of most UNSC military personnel, and he had opted to wear a simple patrol cap adorned with the single black star insignia of a brigadier general in lieu of a helmet. Furthermore, while Lysander _was_ armed, unlike the rifles which Athena insisted her staff carry with them at all times, Lysander merely had a sidearm, which he wore in a shoulder holster positioned just under his left armpit in a similar fashion to the way Athena had seen most UNSC tankers carry theirs. All in all, Lysander appeared pretty much exactly the way she expected a general-grade officer in charge of an armored division to look.

"Have a seat General," Athena finally commanded, and watched as Lysander pulled out the small folding chair in front of her desk and sat down. She leaned forward on her desk. "My name is Lieutenant General Athena Miles, commander of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Force, and now general in charge of all UNSC forces within the northern half of this city and surrounding areas – the so-called 'northern front.' I asked the highest-ranking UNSC Army officer to report to me and seeing as you're here, I'm assuming that's you."

"As far as I'm aware, ma'am," Lysander immediately replied. Athena raised an eyebrow.

"'As far as you're aware?'" she echoed.

"The Army is… in a bit of a disarray," Lysander noted somewhat sardonically. Athena snorted.

"Yes… I've noticed," she said, gesturing at her data pad which still displayed the Army's casualty list. She could see Lysander's eyes flicker towards it, but he made no comment. Athena put her hands together.

"So, no doubt, General, you've heard about the general strategic briefing and planning secession Admiral Spaatz has called that is to take place in less than an hours' time. The purpose of said briefing is undoubtedly to plan the upcoming operation that will see the Covenant landing site crushed beneath our heel, in which the forces currently positioned in this city will play a crucial role."

"No doubt, ma'am," Lysander agreed. "Especially given our close proximity to the landing site itself. Guess that's what happens when the Covenant only attempt to break out in one direction: the south."

Athena nodded.

"Of course," she said. "However, in order to formulate a proper plan of offensive, I need to know what I'm working with. If it was just my Marines, this would be simple: 9MEF's ground combat element is primarily composed of Marines from the 21st MARDIV. En route to Actium, we were assigned another two Marine combat units: the 88th MEU – which had been en route to Newsaka to aid in the evacuation taking place there – as well as the 103rd MEU, which has yet to arrive in system."

"However, with the suspension of the delivery of further reinforcements to this city yesterday, only _one_ of those units was actually able to make it to the surface: the 88th. Twenty-two hundred Marines and Sailors in one task force; hardly enough to conduct a major offensive."

"Especially against the Covenant in urban warfare, ma'am," Lysander agreed.

"Which is why I'll be needing to rely heavily on the Army for support," Athena explained. "Now: I understand your division, the 53rd AD is currently stationed in the city. However, after yesterday's losses… well, I'm trying to figure out what your current combat strength actually stands at. Care to enlighten me, General?"

Lysander grimaced, and instantly Athena had a bad feeling about the situation.

"It's… complicated, ma'am," Lysander reluctantly began. "First off, you have to understand, it's barely been four months since the destruction of Draco III, in which the 53rd suffered heavily: we were still trying to pick up the pieces when the Covenant invaded. Of my three combat maneuver brigades, only the 2nd could have been considered 'at full-strength.' Unfortunately, they were performing brigade-sized maneuvers down in Graham Quarry – which is just south of Byzas – when the Covenant landed right in the middle of our AO, essentially cutting my division in half. As of right now, 2nd Brigade is completely offline, with all communications severed, and in fact, has already been transferred out of my control."

"As to my other brigades, 1st and 4th, neither of them were even at fifty percent allocated strength when the attack began, however 1st Brigade most certainly had it worse: the Covenant landed right on top of them, as they did with 53rd Division Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion. As of right now, both units can be considered 'annihilated' as the majority of the command staff of both units have become casualties – including Major General Alexander Gilbert, divisional commander."

Athena grimly nodded. She had been wondering what had happened to Lysander's CO. Now she knew.

"What about 3rd Brigade?"

The look Lysander gave Athena caused chills to go down her spine, and she immediately regretted asking.

"There _is_ no 3rd Brigade," Lysander grimly declared. "Vast majority of 3/53 never made it off Draco III; they got burned along with the rest of the colony. That's why we have a 4th Brigade. Which leads me to another problem: 4th Brigade is made up of surviving personnel from the Draco III Colonial Militia, more than seventy-five percent of which weren't even tankers to begin with…"

"Prior to being summoned here, I was attempting to consolidate my remaining forces into one, single, combat brigade; however, my troops and staff officers are scattered all over the city," Lysander admitted. "Along with the loss of both the division command and the entire divisional staff, my 4th Brigade commander was killed in action, while his XO was critically wounded in action; 1st Brigade CO was on leave on the other side of the planet when the invasion began and won't be able to rejoin us for another day at least, while his XO was killed in action. The commanding officer of my sustainment brigade, Colonel Menteith is still alive, but last known position was somewhere behind enemy lines whereas the CO of my combat aviation brigade hasn't been seen since the invasion began and is now being considered 'MIA – status unknown'. While the commander of my division artillery, Colonel Bemis, is still alive and well, that's only _one_ of my six field commanders I'm supposed to have."

He paused.

"There's going to be a lot of promotions today," he noted with a hint of sarcasm.

Athena resisted the urge to sigh. That… was a lot worse than she had expected. She knew the situation was bad, she just hadn't realize the shortfall was actually with the command staff, and not the troops on the ground. That explained why there was virtually no coordination above the battalion level: if Lysander's report was accurate, then practically all the field-grade officers that were responsible for ensuring the uninterrupted flow of communication between units had all been killed or were missing in action.

"What about pulling staff officers from other units? I understand the Army was able to deploy another division to the city prior to our arrival?" Athena began, but before she could even finish, Lysander was already shaking his head.

"The 222nd Airborne Division, yes: they were deployed to the city yesterday. However, their situation is worse than ours, if you can believe that. First off, they weren't an intact unit to begin with either: they were in the middle of being returned to their garrison planet of Skopje for refit after two months of heavy fighting on Newsaka before they were re-routed here. Because of that, they were at the bottom of the list for in-theater resupply and as such had not received any replacements for their losses. From what I've heard, they barely even had enough weapons and ammo to refit their soldiers, and thus had to pull directly from the Air Force's armory. Which may have contributed to the disaster that occurred in orbit…"

Athena looked up at that. "What disaster?"

Lysander sighed. "Exact cause is unknown, but somehow a Covenant boarding team was able to slip past the Navy's defenses and make it onboard the UNSC _Stanisław Skalski,_ the Air Force aircraft carrier that had been transporting the majority of the 222nd. While the Covenant were _eventually_ repelled, it wasn't before several hangars were overrun, including the one the airborne command staff had gathered in, in preparation to be deployed to the surface. Losses were… extensive."

This time, Athena couldn't resist the urge. She reached up and began massaging her temples.

"What about the various militias: what's their status like?" she asked, doing her best to keep the annoyance out of voice.

"Largest unit in the AO was a battalion and the brigade HHC from the Thracia Provincial Army's 506th Military Intelligence Brigade. However, their CO, Colonel Gregor Paxton, was last seen minutes after the landings began, attempting to attack the Covenant forces before they had a chance to get organized. He hasn't been seen or heard from since, and is now considered 'MIA – presumed KIA.'"

"Only other significant militia presence would be half an infantry battalion from one of the Actium Navy's Naval Infantry regiments."

Athena grunted. "And what do we have for air cover."

Lysander paused.

"In terms of Army aviation assets, unfortunately most of our airframes were destroyed on the ground. As such, I've gone ahead and converted most of my combat aviation brigade into infantrymen to try and fill the voids left in the frontline. Fortunately, the 222nd still has about three-quarters of their allocated aircraft intact, so we'll be able to rely on them instead."

"In terms of the UNSC Air Force, I know as per SOP that most of the combat groups of the No 112 Air Division were transferred to ODC to assist with the battle up there. In terms of assets around here, Actium Air Force had their gunships up in force; however, all of them were grounded the moment the Covies parked a cruiser over the city. So, I'm not sure how many survived. Air Force assets don't get integrated with the Army at the division level," Lysander admitted. "That's what the Army Aviation Branch is for."

Athena mentally sighed. This was part of the reason she severely disliked working with other military branches. Unlike the other branches, the Marine Corps was almost entirely self-contained, possessing their own ground, air, and logistical assets. While they weren't always available, being part of the same organization meant the groundwork for being able to coordinate their actions together on the fly had already been laid. Whereas, with say, the Army and the Air Force, it took time to determine what was needed where. And right now, time was not on their side.

"Alright, first thing's first: we need to interface with the Air Force and see what sort of assets they're willing to dedicate for our usage," Athena began ordering as soon as she came to a decision. "I believe I have enough time to deploy at least one more Marine unit in time for this counterattack, and I can have 9MEF's air combat element, the 12th Marine Aircraft Group, deployed to the surface to provide us CAS and air cover, if need be. Though, ideally, that's something I would like to avoid as I would rather have one of my combat regiments on station instead: by the sounds of it, General, this city could use more combat troops."

"Agreed, ma'am," Lysander immediately replied. "While I have every confidence in the fighting ability of my men, fact of the matter is, _all_ my troops are currently in the field; I have no reserves."

Athena nodded in understanding. "In terms of organization, I want to reorganize the entire frontline into temporary battalions based on geographical location as opposed to different branches and MOSs; I'll pull some staff from the 9MEF H&S group to fill in the missing field officer positions, at least until we're able to conduct a more thorough reorganization of all units currently in the city. These mixed units are no doubt going to cause confusion in terms of logistics, however the ability to coordinate the actions of all elements involved in this upcoming offensive will be worth the drawbacks. Especially since, if we're not able to destroy the Covenant in the next few days, there's a good chance none of it will matter."

"In terms of fire support, how much artillery support do you have, General?"

Lysander gave a wicked grin.

" _That_ , is the one thing we _do_ have," he announced. "All of the divisional artillery was able to survive relatively intact, plus, with Colonel Bemis still in action, fire control is still very strong."

"How many guns? Give me numbers."

"Well, in the Army, most of the battalions assigned to the brigade get attached directly to the maneuver elements to support their operations. However, there's still the heavy artillery battalion in operation: one battalion of three batteries each, with each battery possessing six howitzers. So, a total of eighteen 203mm M145A 'Rhino' self-propelled howitzers, with plenty of ammo, ready for immediate tasking."

"Good," Athena grunted as she made a note. "In that case, I'll have the 88th MEU's artillery battery temporarily disbanded, and its personnel transferred over to the infantry. A hundred and twenty Marines; not a whole lot, but if we can't get one of the Marine regiments onto the surface in time, then every rifle is going to count. Colonel Pasang!"

The door to her office opened, and Pasang poked her head in. "Yes, General?"

"Find out who's in charge of the Air Force component around here, and get them on the radio immediately. General Lysander, have all your logistical units begin pushing up as much ammo and weapons as they possibly can to the troops on the front so that they'll be ready to step off once this offensive begins. Afterwards, I want you, and Colonel Ghaani inside the command center with me, pouring over a tac map so we can determine the most optimal way of reorganizing the frontline into new battalions. I want an actionable plan ready and in my hand to be able to present to NORTHCOM by the system-wide briefing at zero three hundred hours, which gives us exactly twenty-six minutes. That's not a lot of time, so let's _move_ people!"

 **xxx**

"Are we ready to begin?"

Athena looked around the table where she had gathered her essential staff to attend the briefing alongside her. Members included: Colonel Pasang, her chief of staff, Colonel Ghaani of the 88th MEU, her senior enlisted advisor, Sergeant Major Osterman, her G-2 and his aide, as well as General Lysander and _his_ staff were all in attendance.

When no one spoke up, Athena glanced at her Marine technicians standing nearby. "Then let's begin. Activate."

Athena resisted the urge to flinch as the hologram activated, and she suddenly found herself somewhere else. Even though there weren't any identifying marks, she instantly knew where she was: back in orbit. Specifically, the main assembly room aboard Heliopolis Station, where the system-wide brief was to take place. She looked around.

Aside from the personnel she had brought with her, whose images were being cast next to her, there were also all sorts of officers from all four service branches around; as every single officer in charge of a division, division-sized equivalent, or larger command that was expecting to see contact with the Covenant within the next thirty-six hours had been ordered to attend this briefing. Needless to say, the area was pretty crowded. Furthermore, as each general-grade and flag officer had been allowed to bring whatever personnel and staff they had deemed necessary for their operations, the room was practically filled to the brim with uniformed service members.

A few of the people were physically present aboard the station, however the vast majority were holograms as people were calling in from wherever their headquarters were located. This was primarily done for two reasons: one, it would have been too time-consuming and too much of a hassle to try and shuttle all these people to the station, and two, it would have been too dangerous to have this many commanders in the same room – after all, if the Covenant somehow caught wind of the meeting taking place and managed to destroy the station, the confusion caused by the sudden loss of the system's top military command would be devastating.

Fortunately, security wasn't something Athena needed to worry about, so she automatically began looking around the room, trying to figure out who was present. Some of the officers she recognized - for example, her executive officer of the 9th MEF, the commanding officers for both the 21st Marine Division and the 12th Marine Aircraft Group, as well as the commanding officer of not just the 103rd MEU, but also all four Marine regiments assigned to the 21st MARDIV – however, most people Athena did _not_ know, which she couldn't help but find rather annoying, as she was going to have to work alongside many of them in order to win this battle.

Fortunately, Lysander seemed to immediately pick up on the source of Athena's aggravation, as he leaned forward to quietly speak to her.

"That's Supreme Commander of all military forces on Actium, General Jason Langley, UNSC Army," he whispered, while pointing at one specific individual sitting across the room. Athena looked at where he was pointing, and nodded when she spotted the man in question.

"Yes, I remember him," she whispered back. "General Langley was the one who appointed me commander of the northern front. However, who's the four-star general sitting next to him?"

"That's General Robert Fields, UNSC Army, and commanding officer of Actium Northern Command, which is the command responsible for the entire continent of Hellas, in which the city of Byzas is located."

"Hm. Nice to put a face to a voice. However, he looks somewhat familiar: do you know if he's worked with the Marine Corps before?"

She could hear Lysander shrugging. "He could have, though I don't know too much about him: all I know is that he was commanding officer of the Vesuvius District of the Army Corps of Engineers before being promoted and transferred here."

Athena silently nodded as she made sure to try and memorize Fields' face; as her direct reporting officer, Athena knew they would be working very closely together in the next few days.

"What about the woman sitting just off to his right?" Athena asked, nodding at the redheaded lady wearing the three-star insignia of a lieutenant general.

"Lieutenant General Mabel Valerien, commander of the XIV Armored Corps, of which the 53rd had been a part, at least until this morning. I believe as commanding officer of the largest ground unit in the south, she's been appointed the direct field commander of the southern front: essentially, your counterpart."

Athena made a mute sound of acknowledgement as Valerien happened to look in her direction, and Athena reflexively lifted her hand in greeting, a gestured that Valerien was quick to return.

Turning away from the other general, Athena continued to scan the rest of the officers, and as she did, she happened to realize there was a pattern to the way the room had been set up: everyone appeared to have been divided by the various fronts. For example, those that had been assigned to fight in the north were all clustered around her – mainly the Marines of the 9th MEF, as well as the Soldiers of the 53rd Armored. Whereas, directly across from her, clustered around General Valerien, were the commanders who were expecting to take the lead in the south – that group appeared to be made up primarily of UNSC Army officers.

Sitting equal distance between the two groups were Generals Langley and Fields, both of whom would clearly be the commanders in charge of the ground theater of this battle. Looking across from them, on the other side of the room, Athena spotted a large cluster of Air Force and Naval officers and concluded she was staring at the officers in charge of the space and orbital theater of the battle.

"I assume those are the officers in charge of the UNSC fleet currently sitting in Actium's orbit?" Athena whispered, jerking her head in their direction.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Lysander glancing in the direction Athena was staring at, and bobbed his head. "Yes, ma'am, appears to be."

"Recognize any of them?"

"Well, the four-star Air Force general sitting in the front there is General Tevita Iqbal, commander of the Fifty-Second Tactical Air Force, and is ultimately responsible for all UNSCAF assets in the system, including all ODPs in orbit. The admiral sitting next to him I _believe_ is Admiral Azouz Amarchih, commander of Sixth Fleet, which is garrisoned here."

"I thought this was the garrison for the _Nineteenth_ Fleet. At least, that's who the Albatrosses who brought us down to the surface were assigned to."

"I think elements of the Nineteenth were passing through the system when they got roped into this mess. But I'll be honest, ma'am, I don't know much about the Navy's operations," Lysander admitted.

Athena snorted. Fair enough.

Before any more questions could be voiced, movement near the entrance to the room caught Athena's eye, and she spotted a single master chief petty officer come walking into the room. Unlike the other people, Athena didn't need Lysander's help in identifying this man as she knew exactly who he was: Force Master Chief Petty Officer Kojo Massoud, the senior enlisted advisor of the entire system.

"GROUP!" he bellowed, his booming voice easily cutting through the buzz of conversations in the room. "A-TEN- **HUT!"**

Immediately the scraping of chairs filled the air as the entire assembly climbed to their feet and snapped to attention. Moments later, the commander-in-chief of the entire system, Admiral Lukas Spaatz himself, came strolling into the room.

"Be seated!" he barked at the now silent room. "Let's get started."

Athena calmly returned to her seat and as she did, she noticed Spaatz taking up a position in the center of the room, where he was joined by four other figures: a woman wearing the uniform of the UNSC Navy, a man wearing the uniform of the UNSC Air Force, another man wearing the uniform of the UNSC Army, and a hologram of an anthropomorphic hare or rabbit. She figured the rabbit had to be the avatar of Spaatz's aide-de-camp, Kanin, while the three others sitting with him were the section chiefs of their respective service's intelligence agencies.

"Alright, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for attending on such short notice. My name is Admiral Lukas Spaatz, UNSC Navy, and I'm commanding officer of FLEETCOM Sector Twelve. For those of you who are unaware, yesterday, at zero nine hundred hours Juliet on the sixth of May, standard military calendar, a task force consisting of nine Covenant warships jumped into the system. They were quickly joined by thirty-eight other warships. Through the combined efforts of the UNSC military and the Actium Colonial Militia, we were able to halt the Covenant efforts to seize control of the colony, though not before they were able to obtain an airhead on the surface. As of four hours ago, Covenant forces ceased all offensive activity and assumed defensive positions, surrendering the initiative and thus granting us a chance to eliminate all Covenant presence on both the surface and in this system. The goal of this meeting is to determine exactly _how_ we will be able to accomplish those objectives."

Without warning, a small green light appeared, and Athena looked around for the source, only to see Valerien had hit the button to indicate she wanted to talk.

Spaatz glanced in her direction.

"General Valerien?"

"Pardon the interruption, Admiral, but I did have a question: with all due respect to you and the intelligence community, how can we be certain that the Covenant have indeed surrendered the initiative, and that they aren't attempting to provoke us into going on the offensive and lure us out of our defensive formations? Based on historical precedent as well as personal experience, the Covenant have proven time and time again that their military doctrine is based _solely_ around the offensive. It seems rather unlikely they would suddenly change that mentality here and now."

Spaatz nodded, then glanced at the naval officer sitting beside him. "Captain al-Cygni?"

The woman stood up and cleared her throat.

"Captain al-Cygni. ONI, Section One," al-Cygni said, introducing herself. "To answer your question, General, ONI was able to intercept a communique sent from this invasion force to… somewhere in deep space. While the entire message has not been decrypted, ONI, with the assistance of AFIC, was able to interpret _some_ of it. According to what we were able to glean, the reason for the sudden halt in offensive action is that it appears as though some sort of political or religious leader - we're not entirely sure which, as the word doesn't directly translate into English – was assassinated on the surface of the colony during combat operations."

"Given what we know about Sangheili 'honor' practices, the loss of such a leader would cast great dishonor on whichever Sangheili is in charge of this invasion. As such, we can surmise one of two things has happened: either the invasion commander has been relieved of command, or he committed ritual suicide in order to save face. Either way would result in a tremendous disruption to the Covenant chain of command, which is why we are confident that this is not a ruse."

Valerien nodded, and al-Cygni sat back down. Spaatz opened his mouth, but before he could say anything –

"Why is this the first we're hearing of this?"

All eyes turned to the speaker, General Iqbal, who hardly seemed perturbed at suddenly being the center of attention.

"Pardon, General Iqbal?" Spaatz replied. "I'm afraid I don't understand the question."

"This assassination operation," Iqbal elaborated. "If ONI had intelligence regarding the presence of a Covenant high-ranking political or religious leader, why was no effort made to _capture_ said leader, and use the creature as a bargaining chip? Or, at the very least, interrogation or intelligence?"

Athena glanced at Spaatz and his intelligence chiefs. As much as she disliked the tone Iqbal was using when addressing his superior officer, she had to admit she was curious as to what Spaatz had to say, as this was the first time in her many years of service fighting against the alien invaders that she had even heard about a Covenant leader being high enough on the chain of command to warrant the removal of a Covenant field commander. Especially in the midst of an active invasion.

"General, with respect to my colleague," the Air Force intelligence officer sitting next to al-Cygni suddenly interjected, "the usage of the term 'assassination' might have been too strong of a word to use, as we're still not entirely sure how this Covenant leader was killed. He may have been killed by accident in say, a vehicle crash or by a stray artillery shell."

"Given the context of the message, I think it's pretty clear the _Covenant_ believe that this 'Minister' of theirs was deliberately targeted by UNSC forces," al-Cygni interrupted, sounding mildly annoyed.

"The full message has yet to be fully decrypted, so there _is_ no context. Therefore – "

"To answer your question fully, General," Spaatz abruptly spoke up. "If there was an operation to assassinate a Covenant political leader, it was conducted without the knowledge or approval of FLEETCOM headquarters."

There was an intake of breath from somewhere behind Athena, and she glanced over her shoulder, only to see Lysander was quickly typing away at his TACPAD. Moments later, Athena's data pad began buzzing, and she glanced at it to see Lysander had just sent her a small file. Opening it, she stared, not quite understanding.

"What is this?" she whispered.

"It's a requisition request for half a platoon of infantry and a squad of combat engineers," Lysander replied.

"Yes, I can see that; why'd you send it to me? This is too low level for me to meddle with; send it to one of the battalion commanders."

"It's from yesterday," Lysander explained. "And I thought the same thing until I noticed who it was sent by."

Athena raised an eyebrow and curious, she checked the source of the request. Strangely enough, there was no unit or command associated with the request, only a very high-level authorization code. The code itself she didn't recognize, however it could only have come from one place: Special Operations Command. She immediately leaned forward.

"Admiral," she said aloud, attracting the attention of the room. "One of my staff yesterday received a requisition order for half a platoon of paratroopers and a squad of combat engineers from an unknown source inside SOCOM. Could this have been the source of the assassination team?"

"'Infantrymen and sappers;' sounds more like someone was conducting a smash and burn op," someone commented, and Athena took note of the speaker: General Fields, commander of NORTHCOM. Interesting; if Fields didn't know anything about this request, then that meant it didn't pass through him. Which also meant whatever this black ops team was doing, they had been trying to operate on the down-low.

"Plus, it also seems unlikely SOCOM would use conventional troops for an operation of this magnitude," Valerien pointed out.

"Perhaps it was a target of opportunity they ran across during the course of their mission?" someone else suggested, but before the speculation could continue, Spaatz raised his hand.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to need you to focus at the task at hand," he barked. "Let's stop worrying about the minutiae, and start concentrating on the bigger picture here. Regardless of whether that leader was deliberately assassinated by UNSC forces or not, one thing we _can_ be certain about is that embedded in that message was undoubtedly a request for more reinforcements."

"Due to a general lack of information regarding Covenant fleet movements," Spaatz continued as he threw a glance at al-Cygni, as if the lack of information was somehow her fault, "we can't be certain when these reinforcements will arrive. We do know, however, that it will take some time; estimates place it at being three full Actium days before we start to see the Covenant attempting to reinforce their gains here. That means we've got a very small window to execute any offensive action and eliminate all alien presence, at least on the surface. And for that, I turn to Supreme Commander of all military forces on Actium, General Jason Langley."

General Langley climbed to his feet with a sigh.

"At approximately ten hundred hours Juliet yesterday, the Covenant were able to obtain an airhead on the surface of Actium," he began and a holographic image of the planet abruptly appeared in the center of the room. "They made a single landing, here," a red dot appeared on the image, "in the southwestern and southeastern districts of the city of Byzas, whereupon they began deploying armor and infantry, supported by close air support. Estimates from INSCOM suggest the Covenant was able to deploy something in the realm of a hundred thousand troops; an entire Legion. Within the last thirty hours of fighting, INSCOM estimates perhaps as much as a _third_ of that number were rendered casualties by UNSC forces. Our objective for the next one hundred and eight hours, as defined by intelligence from ONI, is the removal of the remaining two-thirds."

"The overall strategic objective of this operation is the complete and utter eradication of Covenant forces on the surface. Our hope is that with the destruction of the Covenant airhead, we also eliminate their reason for being - and that with the complete loss of their ground component, the invasion fleet sitting in orbit will be forced to withdraw." Langley paused and looked around the room. "However, it should be made clear – and this _cannot_ be overemphasized – any withdrawal on the part of the Covenant would be temporary at best. Make no mistake: the Covenant have our address, and they will keep on coming until we're all dead. With that being said, even a full thirty-six hour grace period would allow us to evacuate even more civilians and critical war components, as well as give High Command the opportunity to reform our defensive line and send us more reinforcements."

Athena sat up as the long term effects of such a move occurred to her. One of the biggest problems the UNSC was having in this war wasn't so much the technological disparity between the two sides, but rather time. Time, the bane of all human existence as there never seemed to be enough of it, and this war was no exception.

Due to the relentless nature of the Covenant, the UNSC had been put on the defensive for far too long. As a result, they simply didn't have time to do certain things. Things like: finishing the relocation of the civilians that were evacuated off colonies that had been destroyed. The reconstruction and reorganization of crucial war manufacturing factories. The implementation of new tactics and technologies that had been pioneered and invented as a result of this war. Even allowing the UNSC military to actually stand down from full alert for a full twenty-fours would be a relief. If the UNSC had the time to do at least one of those things, perhaps the war wouldn't be going as poorly as it was.

However, if UNSC forces were somehow able to bog the Covenant down in this system… if they were able to slow the Covenant advance to a crawl… or even halt it… maybe, just maybe, the UNSC would finally get the _time_ it needed.

But of course, that was a long-term strategic objective that would not even become a remote possibility without successful implementation of the first step, which is why Athena shook herself out of her thoughts and turned her attention back to the center of the room. General Langley had sat down, and General Fields was taking his place.

"Elimination of the Covenant airhead will be conducted via a simple strategy," Fields began. "UNSC ground forces, under NORTHCOM's direction, will conduct a hammer and anvil operation that will sweep through the entire city of Byzas. Given the geography of Byzas – with the Haemus Mountain Range running parallel to the city in the west, and the Euxime Ocean to the east – our attack can only come from either the north or south directions."

"Therefore, ground and air forces in the south – aka: the 'Southern Front' – under the command of the Army's Fourteenth Armored Corps will establish a 'U' shaped defensive line that will act as the 'anvil' of this operation. Meanwhile, forces in the north – aka: the 'Northern Front' - under the command of the Marine Corps' Ninth Expeditionary Force, will advance southward through the city proper, driving the Covenant forces out of the city and towards the anvil."

"If this strategy sounds familiar to some of you, that's because it is," Fields admitted. "We attempted to conduct a similar operation at about mid-day yesterday a few hours after the Covenant made landfall, however the operation was never allowed to begin, due to a lack of sufficient ground forces in the north. However, with the influx of Marine reinforcements, we believe that the operation will be successful."

Fields punctuated his statement by glancing in Athena's direction and giving a single nod.

"General Fields, is there a name to this operation?" Spaatz suddenly asked.

"Ah, yes, sir: Operation: SUDDEN PURGE II."

"Well, we can only hope," Spaatz noted. "Please continue General."

"Thank you, sir. Leading the forces on the Southern Front," he continued, "will be UNSC Army Lieutenant General Mabel Valerien. General?"

Fields sat down, only to be quickly replaced by Valerien.

"Thank you, General Fields. Uh, due to recent deployments to both Draco III and Newsaka, unfortunately, there is actually only one of Fourteenth Armored Corps' assigned divisions currently present on Actium: the 53rd Armored Division, which was unfortunately stationed north of the city and cut off from Corps headquarters fairly early in the day yesterday," Valerien reported with a barely noticeable wince. "As of right now, the only UNSC Army unit actually present in at the south would be the 2/53, which for this operation has been temporarily reflagged as the '53rd Armored Brigade Combat Team.' Most of the Fourteenth Armored Corps strength will be drawn primarily from the Actium Army, most notably, the 7th Cavalry Division."

"As the 7th's primary function is COIN operations, they're not equipped for a full-frontal assault against Covenant defensive positions. As such, we will _not_ establish our anvil on the southern edge of the city. Instead, we will implement it some twenty klicks south of the city limits. Yesterday, Army soldiers were able to retain control of the crucial town of Newington. The town has since been fortified, and will serve as the keystone to the anvil."

"Once the Marines in the north are able to drive the Covenant out of the city, they'll be trapped out in the open, where gunships from the Actium Air Force, as well as massed artillery, will be able to eliminate the survivors with ease. General Langley?"

"Are there any questions so far?" Langley asked as Valerien sat back down.

"It sounds like this operation is going to rely heavily on the Marines," Iqbal suddenly said, and Athena couldn't help but bristle at the sneering tone in his voice. "Do we really think those Jarheads are going to be able to succeed?"

"Why don't you ask them?" Langley turned to Athena. "General Miles?"

With a mute grunt, Athena climbed to her feet.

"The Marine Corps is fully prepared to do what we do best: kick alien ass and take names," Athena boldly declared. "However, our current issue is that there's not enough infrastructure to allow the deployment of the majority of 9MEF's forces; mainly, her ground combat element, the 21st MARDIV. We are in the process of bringing down one of the combat regiments from orbit, the 77th Marine Regiment, however one regiment alone is not going to provide enough striking power, so we'll be relying heavily on units already positioned in the city."

"I'm not concerned about the fighting prowess of the men and women that have been reassigned to my command; by all accounts, despite being outnumbered, outgunned, and completely caught by surprise, they were able to stave off the Covenant advance with little to no external help; a testament, perhaps, to the leadership of their command." Athena gestured in Lysander's direction.

"My main concern is, however, the implementation of command and control, as over twelve field and general-grade officers became casualties yesterday."

Athena paused as a series of murmurs immediately broke out amongst the crowd at that, and she couldn't help but sympathize. With the war, receiving reports about enlisted and junior-grade officers becoming casualties was, unfortunately, becoming par for the course. However, despite the brutality of the fighting, it was still relatively rare for field or general-grade officers to join that list. Given that the vast majority of this crowd _was_ made up of field and general-grade officers, as well as a number of Navy flag officers, the news probably hit just a bit _too_ close to home for some people.

"Alright, settle down people!" Spaatz snapped. "Continue your report, General Miles."

Athena shrugged. "Well, sir, there isn't much more to say. I'm in the process of transferring a number of officers from my headquarters group to act as battalion and brigade commanders, but seeing as how leading men into the field isn't something the majority of them have trained for, coordination is… well, to be blunt, it's going to be shit. But! We will be supplemented heavily by air support from the Actium Air Force. So, as long as the UNSC Air Force is able to keep the Covenant Navy off our backs, _we_ will be able to succeed in our objective."

She couldn't help but direct that last statement in General Iqbal's direction, who merely smirked in response.

"Yes. Well, this seems like a good time to discuss what the Fleet will be doing while all this is underway," Spaatz noted. "Admiral Amarchih?"

Athena looked away from Iqbal as the man sitting nearby him climbed to his feet.

"Yes, well," Amarchih began in heavily accented English. "Ideally, the Fleet's goal is to work in close conjunction with the ground forces. The Fleet's hope is that by pressuring the Covenant on the ground, the Covenant Navy will be forced to chose between supporting their Legions – and therefore putting themselves in a less than optimal position to defend themselves – or holding their ground against our naval attack – therefore abandoning their Legions to die."

"The best-case scenario is if the Covenant try to do both – defend their landing site _and_ hold their positions - as that would divide their forces and allow the Fleet to defeat each component in detail. However, the Fleet's projections are less than optimistic about that option; after all, the Covenant aren't stupid. They know if they were to lose all their ships, then it doesn't matter if their Legions are able to resist our attack - without a presence in orbit, their ground forces would be left cut-off and isolated."

"Therefore, realistically, the Fleet's prediction is that the Covenant will hold their position in the hopes they'll be able to withstand the Fleet's attack long enough for reinforcements to arrive. Fortunately, the Fleet has a plan to address this, and will do so – as they say – by 'taking a page from the Covenant's book.'"

"Just prior to their establishment on the surface," Amarchih continued, "The Covenant had been attempting to attrition the Fleet utilizing hit and run tactics: jumping in, focusing all their firepower on _one_ ship in the hopes of disabling or destroying it, before immediately withdrawing. The Fleet will attempt to replicate a similar tactic by dividing the various destroyer squadrons of both the Sixth and the Nineteenth Fleets into separate 'wolf packs.' These wolf packs will prowl the edge of the Covenant's perimeter, and upon seeing a target of opportunity, will strike like lightning before withdrawing."

"Perhaps the Covenant will pursue? In that case, the Fleet's main striking force, code name 'Task Force Whiskey,' will be on standby, ready and prepared to exploit any opportunities the Covenant may inadvertently provide. If the Covenant choose not to pursue, then it is the hope of the Fleet the wolf packs will eventually attrition the Covenant to the point where the Fleet is simply able to engage the Covenant forces directly."

"The Fleet's current dilemma is that, due to technological limitations, our ships aren't able to make the same micro-jumps the Covenant are able to. To compensate, the Fleet will instead be utilizing a series of predetermined jump coordinates, as calculated by smart AI Kanin," Amarchih paused and glanced at the anthropomorphic rabbit avatar standing next to Spaatz, "as well as computing power borrowed from Actium colony dumb AI Superintendent. Unfortunately, while said calculations are being compiled, both Kanin and the colony Superintendent will be unavailable. However, it is the hope of the Fleet that with these calculations, our ships will be able to somewhat replicate the prior actions of the Covenant."

Then, without another word, Amarchih quickly sat back down.

Athena's attention was drawn back to the center of the room as Spaatz stood back up.

"As everyone should have realized by now," he began, "much of the success of this operation hinges on the ground component. Therefore, General Fields, I ask you: how soon do you estimate before your forces will be ready for launch?"

Fields glanced at Valerien, then glanced at Athena, who shrugged. Athena had already done her homework: she had already submitted all of her requirements and estimates to NORTHCOM HQ prior to arriving at this meeting and based on everything she had heard so far, nothing had really changed for her part. Ideally, she would have liked to put off the attack for at least a couple hours, if only to have the chance to deploy even more of the 21st MARDIV to the surface; however, Athena realized that may not have been possible as the longer they stalled, the longer the Covenant had to prepare their defenses. Therefore, if Fields decided to attack right this very moment, the Marines would make do, as they always did.

"Ideally, sir, I would like a safety margin of six hours in order to move more forces and supplies into position," Fields finally said. "Specifically: bring more CM units up from the south, as well deploy more Marines onto the surface. However, under the circumstances, sir, I believe three hours will have to suffice."

Spaatz nodded.

"Are all Commands in agreement?" he asked.

Athena glanced around the room for dissent. She wasn't expecting anyone to actually speak up and was thus completely caught off guard when Iqbal abruptly stood up.

"Yes, General?" Spaatz said and even though they had only just met, Athena could tell the man was suppressing a sigh. "You have an objection."

"In fact I do, Admiral," Iqbal declared as he stood up straighter. "I've been listening to this briefing, and it would appear as though our entire strategy could be summarized as such: throw enough bodies at the Covenant hope that will suffice."

Fields abruptly leaned forward, looking annoyed. "General, with all due respect, sir, I object to that serious miscategorization of everything we have just covered. The strategy we just discuss is far more complex than…"

Fields slowly trailed off as Spaatz held up his hand.

"General Iqbal, if you had issues with our current strategy, I would have much preferred you have raised them at the beginning of this meeting, rather than the end. However, as you are one of the supreme commanders of this system, I'll allow it for now," Spaatz said. "In meantime, I trust you have an alternative strategy in mind?"

"I do," Iqbal boldly declared. "Instead of relying on a bunch of half-wit ground pounders who aren't even capable of counting to ten – "

Athena automatically bristled when she realized Iqbal was staring right at her when he said that.

" – why don't we leave it to the Air Force to deal with this situation?" Iqbal finished, not a little bit smugly.

Spaatz immediately held up his hand to forestall any arguments from any of the ground commanders. "Elaborate."

"Our goal is to kill the Covenant. Keep the Navy in place to hold back the Covenant fleet, have the ground forces hold their position to prevent them from wandering into my line of fire, and give me half a day. After eighteen hours of non-stop carpet bombing, I guarantee the Air Force will have this situation under complete control by then. At a fraction of the time _and_ human cost it would take to allow the ground forces to accomplish the same thing."

Athena couldn't help but let out a loud, derisive snort at that, however it was lost in the background as all of the ground commanders had immediately broken out in murmurs at Iqbal's bold statement.

"Quiet on deck!" Spaatz snapped, and the room quickly fell silent. Athena watched as Spaatz threw a warning glance at all the ground commanders in the room, including her, before turning his attention back to Iqbal.

"That's a rather intriguing proposal, General," he began, "in the sense that, I would rather avoid taking unnecessary casualties if possible. However, there are some noticeable flaws in your plan that become immediately apparent when considered further. For starters, experience has shown air power alone is not enough to guarantee the death and destruction of all Covenant ground forces – "

"So, send in the ground troops to sweep through the pieces after the bombs have finished falling," Iqbal loudly said, though he immediately fell silent at the stern look Spaatz gave him.

"And we cannot guarantee this because of the sheer amount of infrastructure located under the city, of which the Covenant have already infiltrated," Spaatz continued as though Iqbal hadn't said anything. "In order to clear those areas, we would need to send in ground forces anyway. However, at that point, the city would be in ruins, giving the Covenant the opportunity to dig in among the rubble in such a way that not even _your_ bombers would be able to remove them from. At which point, the battle will stagnant, and we would be unable to secure a victory before the arrival of Covenant reinforcements, whereupon we would be trapped between two forces."

"Therefore," Spaatz concluded, "I do not agree with your assessment that saturation bombing alone will result in victory, and that it is _my_ belief that the arsenal of the Air Force should be used in conjunction of a ground offensive. Does anyone else object?"

Spaatz pointedly stared at Iqbal until he sat back down, whereupon he turned to glance around the room. When no one else spoke up, "Very well. H-hour for Operation: SUDDEN PURGE II will be at zero six hundred hours Juliet. General Fields, whatever you and your forces need, contact FLEETCOM HQ directly and it will be provided. That is all. Dismissed."

And just like that, the meeting was over. Athena glanced around to make sure no one needed anything from her specifically, before pressing a button. Suddenly, she found herself back in her headquarters as the hologram dissipated.

"Typical Air Force," she grumbled as she climbed to her feet. "When will they learn that air power _alone_ has never won a single war in the history of mankind?"

"It certainly is ridiculous, ma'am," Lysander agreed. "The Air Force always seems to wonder why all the other service branches are needed, and why they simply can't have the entire defense budget to themselves. Yet, the moment their airfields are threatened, they're the first to demand the Army come and save them."

"Almost like the Army, in some ways," Athena mused. "They're always trying to absorb the Marines on the justification that, 'they can do what we do! At a fraction of the cost!' Yet, talking to most Army generals, and they don't even know what – "

Athena paused, before glancing at Lysander. She had honestly forgotten she wasn't talking to one of her Marine subordinates, but one of said Army generals.

Fortunately, Lysander didn't seem to mind.

"There's certainly some truth of that, ma'am," Lysander allowed. "Some of my compatriots… well, let's just say I wonder how they obtained their commissions in the first place."

Athena grunted in agreement, however, glanced at her watch, she realized she didn't have much time to continue this course of conversation. Turning to the rest of her staff, she began barking out orders.

"Alright ladies and gentlemen, we have three hours to prepare for this assault, which is more than we expected, so I want to start seeing some results," Athena barked. "General Lysander, interface with your artillery director as well as the Air Force and begin designating targets for a pre-assault aerial and artillery bombardment; let's take out as much of the Covenant defenses as we can before we have our Marines and Soldiers march into the meat grinder. Colonel Pasang, Colonel Savage: I want you two to work together and create for me a plan that will be able to deploy the 21st MARDIV to the surface in the most efficient and effective manner. I want at least the 77th Marine Regiment, with maybe 1st and 3rd Battalions of the 38th Marine Regiment on the surface by H-hour to at least act as the Northern Front's reserves. Sergeant Major Osterman? I want you on logistics; I want all units about to get thrown into battle equipped and armed with all the weapons and ammo they could possibly need, and then I want you to make sure there's going to be enough to sustain them for the rest of this operation, no matter how long that may be. Move up supply depots if you have to."

"Alright, let's move!"

* * *

* Note: there are some aspects, details, and commands that didn't really get much of a mention in this story, specifically that belonging to the Air Force. I'll deal with them in another chapter; there's already too much information being provided in this chapter and any more, I'm afraid I'll be losing people (if I haven't already yet.)

\- **MCIA** : this stands for **M** arine **C** orps **I** ntelligence **A** ctivity. As the name implies, it's basically the Marine Corps equivalent of ONI

\- **UNSC** _ **Stanisław Skalski**_ : this ship is named after Polish Air Force commander General Brygady (Brigadier General) Stanisław Skalski who, during the Invasion of Poland in 1939, shot down five German planes, making him the first Allied fighter ace. After the fall of Poland, then Pilot Officer Skalski would flee to Romania and from there, eventually make his way to Britain where he would join the Royal Air Force. During the course of the war, he could claim at least thirteen more kills, making him Poland's highest-scoring ace of WW2.

After the war, he would return to Poland and rejoin the Polish Air Force, eventually achieving the rank of General Brygady (or Brigadier General in English.) He died on 12 November 2004, at the age of 88.

(The name of this ship was used in an earlier draft of _MIA;_ however, I ended up changing it after I rethought how I wanted the naming convention of Air Forces to go.)

\- **Units:** As with the 53rd Armored Division, the 9th Marine Expeditionary Force, the 21st Marine Division, and the 77th Marine Regiment are all canon units. Everything else is not.

 **\- Company, Field and General-grade officers** : in the US military, officers are divided into three groups: Company-grade, field-grade, and general-grade.

Company-grade officers are your basic officers: 2nd lieutenants, 1st lieutenants, and captains. These are usually the guys you see in the movies leading troops into combat.

Field-grade officers are your majors, lieutenant colonels, and colonels. At this level, outside of special operations and pilots, most of these officers are going to be sitting behind a desk as it's no longer their job to fight and see combat. In fact, if lieutenant colonels (majors are on the edge) are seeing combat, then you know something has gone terribly wrong.

Finally, general-grade officers are, as the name implies, your generals: brigadier generals, major generals, lieutenant generals, and generals.

(The Coast Guard and the Navy, on the other hand, use slightly different terms for their officers. They are, as follows

Junior Officer (ensign, lieutenant, junior grade, and lieutenant)

Field-Grade Officer (lieutenant commander, commander, and captain)

Flag Officer (rear admiral (lower half), rear admiral, vice admiral, and admiral)

* * *

 **Organization**

I realize there have been a lot of names and units thrown out in this chapter, which can be confusing, so here's a small chart. (Note, these are only units that have been mentioned in the chapter; there are a lot more elements involved but it's confusing enough already)

 **Chain of Command (Top to bottom)**

 **FLEETCOM Sector 12 (Ambracia System) –** Admiral Lukas Spaatz

 **Actium Unified Ground Command** – General Jason Langley

 **Actium Northern Command (NORTHCOM) –** General Robert Fields

 **Subordinate Units**

 **FLEETCOM Sector 12**

UNSC Navy Sixth Fleet ( _6th FLT_ ) – Admiral Azouz Amarchih

UNSC Navy Nineteenth Fleet ( _19th FLT_ ) (elements) (Amber's parent fleet)

UNSC Air Force Fifty-Second Tactical Air Force ( _52nd TAF_ ) – General Tevita Iqbal

 **NORTHCOM**

No 112 Air Division ( _112 AirDiv)_ (Zelda's parent unit)

Northern Front

Southern Front

 **Northern Front (9th Marine Expeditionary Force)** – Lieutenant General Athena Miles

UNSC Marine Corps

Northern Front Headquarters Group – Colonel Evan Savage

21st Marine Division ( _21st MARDIV_ ) (not on the surface yet)

38th Marine Regiment ( _38th_ _MAR RGT)_ (not on the surface yet)

77th Marine Regiment ( _77th_ _MAR RGT_ )(not on the surface yet)

88th Marine Expeditionary Unit ( _88th MEU_ ) (Adel's unit) – Colonel Qasim Ghaani

103rd Marine Expeditionary Unit ( _103rd MEU_ ) (not in the system yet)

12th Marine Aircraft Group* (not on the surface yet)

* something to note: in the USMC, this would actually be called a "wing," however for this story, I've decided to flip the structure a bit to make it more like the RAF system, so a "group" is now bigger than a "wing" (so it would go squadron – wing – group.) More on that in a later chapter.

UNSC Army

53rd Armored Division ( _53rd AD_ ) – Brigadier General Janus Lysander

222nd Airborne Division ( _222nd ABN_ ) (Moss' unit - see _Missing in Action_ )

Thracian Army

506th Intelligence Brigade ( _506th MIB_ ) – Colonel Gregor Paxton

 **Southern Front (XIV [Fourteenth] Armored Corps)** – Lieutenant General Mabel Valerien

UNSC Army

53rd Armored Brigade Combat Team ( _53rd ABCT_ ) (Tariq's unit)

Actium Army

7th Cavalry Division ( _7th CAV_ )

197th Sustainment Brigade ( _197th_ _SB_ ) (Marcus' parent unit – not mentioned in this chapter but in chapter 1, and only thrown in for completeness)

 **Other notes**

A "Marine Expeditionary Force" is roughly equivalent in size and structure with an army corps, though with more aircraft integrated at a lower level; numbers are about the same: roughly 14,000

A "Marine Expeditionary Unit" is roughly equivalent to an army "brigade combat team" in terms of maneuverability and unit integration, though it's only about half the size in terms of personnel (2,200 vs. about 4,000.) Though, obviously, with integrated weapon systems (more aircraft in a MEU versus a BCT which has more… well, everything else,) output and strategic effectiveness is about the same.

* * *

 **UNSC Special Operations Command (Otter verse, obviously)**

UNSC Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)

\- Army Special Air Service (SAS)** (role: Counter-insurgency and special reconnaissance)

= (later) Army Spartan Teams (like Noble Team)

\- Marine Corps Orbital Drop Shock Troopers (ODST) (role: Elite light infantry; basically, the UNSC equivalent to the US Army Rangers*)

\- Navy Special Warfare Group (SWAG or also colloquially known as SEALs***) (role: HVT raids and unconventional warfare)

= (later) Navy Spartan Teams (like Blue Team)

\- Air Force Air Parachute Commandos**** (role: Air traffic control and special operations weather technicians)

UNSC Special Operations Command (SOCOM)

\- Army Special Forces aka "Green Berets (role: Foreign Internal Defense and Security force assistance)

\- Marine Corps ODSTs (kind of like how the USMC Force Recon has a "green" and a "black" operations, with "green operations" focusing more on general light infantry action while "black operations" focus more on direct action and unconventional warfare) (I imagine ODST fireteam "Alpha-Nine" from _Halo 3: ODST_ would be a "black operations" unit)

\- Navy Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) (Direct action)

\- Air Force Rescue Squadrons (Pararescuemen aka PJs)

* I imagine the UNSC Army would have some ranger regiments, but unlike their US Army counters, their role in SOCOM would be taken by the ODSTs. Instead, UNSC Army Rangers would be "special operations capable" units that act as shock troops for the Army only, similar to how the USMC Force Reconnaissance battalions work in modern times, or how the US Army Rangers operated during the Vietnam War.

** I'm choosing to go with the name "SAS" as opposed to say, "Delta Force" because of several reasons

1\. SAS is more historic, being founded in 1941 vs. 1977, thus making it arguable the first modern special operations unit.

2\. The SAS is and was the inspiration for many similar units, including the US Army's Delta Force itself. This is evident by the number of units in modern times that either go by or use the nickname the name "SAS," or adopt a similar motto (Who Dares Win.) The list includes:

\- (obviously) the British Special Air Service (SAS)

\- Australian Special Air Service Regiment (SASR)

\- New Zealand Special Air Service (NZSAS)

\- Zimbabwe Special Air Service

\- Rhodesian Special Air Service (until Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1980)

\- French Army 1st Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment (commonly referred to as the "French SAS" because the unit is descended from the Free French Army's 3rd and 4th SAS of WW2 and currently uses the same motto)

\- Belgian Army Special Operations Regiment (descended from Belgian's 5th SAS of WW2, currently utilize the same cap badge and formerly, at least one unit (1st Parachute Battalion, disbanded in 2011) used the same motto)

\- Hellenic Army 1st Raider/Paratrooper Brigade (currently uses the same motto)

\- Israel's Sayeret Matkal (modelled after and uses the same motto)

\- US Army's 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (modelled after)

3\. (In my opinion) the SAS is better known, though admittedly, this has probably changed within the last few decades.

*** The name "Navy Special Warfare Group" is kind of a blend between the South Korean and Philippine Navies' special forces units ("Navy Special Warfare Flotilla" and "Naval Special Operations Group," respectively.) Originally, I was going to just call them "SEALs" after the US Navy SEALs just because I imagine most people would be familiar with who and what they were, therefore saving me from having to explain, but then I changed my mind as I decided I rather liked having a more "generic" name for the group.

That being said, as both groups were heavily influenced by the US Navy and are in fact, sometimes unofficially known as "South Korean SEALs/Philippine SEALs," I figured the same would apply here. Therefore, the official name of the group is "Navy Special Warfare Group" or "SWAG" for short, but they would be better known by their nickname of "SEALs." (So, in other words, I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too.)

**** The name "Air Parachute Commandos" is the English name for the French Air Force commando group, the "Commandos parachutists de l'air." Why'd I choose to use this name as opposed to anything else? Well, I try to have influences from other national militaries simply because making the UNSC a "United States Military clone" can get boring after a while plus, personally I just think the name is a bit cooler and more indicative than the USAF equivalent of "Special Tactics Squadrons." Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing them in the least bit, just "special tactics" always makes me think of police SWAT teams, and not military.


	38. Chapter 38

**Chapter 38**

 **UNSC** _ **Gabrielle  
**_ **High Orbit, Actium  
May 7, 2545  
0307**

 **Amber**

"Okay. Turn the bot thirteen degrees port, and go back. Let's double check the barrel one more time."

With the controller in hand, Amber calmly did as she was told, and watched on the screen as the maintenance bot turned around and started heading back towards the breech. Dialing back on the acceleration, both Amber and her supervisor – Gunner's Mate Second Class Jim "Tuna" Krasinski – automatically leaned forward in order to check the walls of the barrel for damage.

Due to the magnetic energies and friction involved when firing the main battery, unlike the rest of the ship, the firing mechanism and the barrel for the _Gabrielle's_ main magnetically accelerated cannon did not come equipped with self-diagnostic sensors. As a result, anytime the barrel needed to be maintained or inspected, the gunners aboard the ship were forced to send a drone through the breech and manually search for issues essentially by hand.

In Amber's opinion, such a task was always one giant pain in the ass, mostly because of how long it took to actually certify the MAC was up to speed. However, after the amount of damage the kamikazing Banshees had caused to the rest of the ship, no one was willing to go into battle without knowing _for sure_ they would actually be able to fire their main battery without it blowing up in their faces. Especially considering the fact that the barrel and firing mechanism of the MAC was not only embedded within the heart of the ship, but also ran the entire length, so any failure in the weapon could potentially cause catastrophic damage to the entire ship.

"Whoa, hold on… stop!" Tuna abruptly said, and Amber immediately ignited the reverse thrusters on the bot to ensure it came to a complete stop. "Go back, like, thirty centimeters."

Amber quietly did as she was ordered.

"Okay. Rotate the camera up… I dunno, seven degrees?"

Amber absentmindedly nodded and reoriented the camera.

"Okay, stop! Zoom in. Does that look like a crack on the housing to you?"

Amber automatically leaned closer to the screen even though such a move was obviously pointless. Sure enough –

"Shit. Yeah, I think it is," Amber reported with a groan.

"Dammit," Tuna swore as he rubbed his eyes. "How the heck did we miss that the first time around?"

Amber shook her head, even as she glanced at the holographic, wireframe image of the entire barrel, to see exactly where the bot was currently located. "Looks like the crack is here, in segment three alpha."

"Of course it is," Tuna darkly muttered. "The damage just _has to be_ located in one of the most difficult spots to reach." He groaned and ran his hands through his hair, before patting his own cheeks. "Well, we better get to it then. Let me let the CIC know we're gonna have to keep the MAC down a bit longer than we initially anticipated. Bring the bot back and get the tools ready; let's fix this thing before we actually need to get to use it."

"Yeah, I could do all that Tuna, but we still need Chief Carrizosa's sign off before we do any repairs like that," Amber reminded him.

"…shoot. And he just went to bed, didn't he?"

Amber nodded and Tuna let out another groan.

"Well, what you think the chances are he left his radio on?" he asked, even as he grabbed his earpiece off the table. Amber snorted.

"Would _you_ keep your radio on if you were able to go to bed for the first time in twenty-two hours?"

"No," Tuna admitted, "but then again, I'm not the chief gunner's mate either. Ah well, guess we're about to find out." He cleared his throat and activated his mic. "Chief Carrizosa, this is Tuna: come in, over."

Silence greeted them.

"Chief, come in. You there?"

"Doesn't sound like it," Amber noted, causing Tuna to sigh.

"Well, guess you were right Owain," he said, lowering the radio. "Alright: let me get this work order filled out. In the meantime, head over to the Goat Locker and go wake Carrizosa up, will you? I'll send over the work order in transit so you can have him sign off on it real quick."

"Wait, what?" Amber immediately protested. "Why'd I have to go?"

"Because Carrizosa is less likely to yell at you for waking him up than he is me," Tuna replied with a shrug. "Plus, I gotta go talk to Shepard, and I know just how much you _love_ her."

Amber merely grunted in response. Well, if that was the case…

Suppressing a sigh, Amber quickly removed the maintenance bot's remote from around her neck and placed it on the nearby hook. Then, somewhat reluctantly, she climbed to her feet and walked out of the room.

As was Navy tradition, sleeping quarters aboard this ship was divided up into three main sections: the enlisted section (which was both the largest and the crappiest,) the officer's section (though both the captain and the executive officer had their own private quarters,) and finally, an entire section for all the chief petty officers onboard, formally known as "Chief Petty Officers' Quarters," but more commonly referred to as the "Goat Locker." (Why, Amber had no idea.)

The thing about the Goat Locker was, because it was a private place reserved for CPOs and above, it was strictly off limits for all other personnel, including officers. Not even the captain was allowed inside. The only exception would be if said personnel had a direct invitation from one of the chiefs, which unfortunately, Amber did _not_ have. And while she knew Chief Carrizosa wouldn't really care, Amber _also_ knew most of the other CPOs onboard had sticks up their asses, and _would._ Therefore, Amber was _not_ looking forward to getting chewed out by a bunch of people.

Still, this was an emergency, and if worse came to worse, Amber supposed she could always blame Tuna.

Walking down the corridor to just aft of the Chief's Mess, Amber paused right outside the bulkhead door that had a small sign that simply read "CPO Quarters" on the face. Pulling out her TACPAD, Amber glanced at it make sure Tuna had sent her the work order like he was supposed to have. At the same time, Amber absentmindedly leaned forward to knock on the door, but before she could touch it, the door suddenly swung open.

"Oh, JEEZ!" Amber yelped as, caught off guard by the lack of resistance, she found herself stumbling forward, straight into somebody's arms. Panting in fright, she laid there for a moment, trying to catch her bearings.

"Um… hello."

At the sound of someone speaking, Amber looked up to see –

"Chief Leporidae?" Amber blurted out.

Sure enough, standing right above Amber's head was Chief Master-at-Arms Job Leporidae.

Leporidae had been Amber's temporary commanding officer when she had been stuck aboard Wayward Station. When the station had been boarded, Amber had been assigned to his security team and as such, they had fought side by side as they desperately tried to prevent the Covenant from tearing the station apart. In fact, it had been Leporidae who had managed to save Amber's life when the station had suffered from a catastrophic breach in the hull, holding on to her and preventing her from being sucked out into space long enough for the emergency bulkhead walls to seal. Afterwards, he had brought her to the sick bay whereupon he had promptly disappeared to go secure the rest of the station.

Given that, as far as she knew, Leporidae's assigned posting was onboard Wayward and not the _Gabrielle_ , Amber had honestly expected to never see him again. Thus, his current presence aboard the _Gabrielle_ came more of a shock to her than her fall had been.

"Hi. GM Owain, wasn't it?" Leporidae gently asked, and Amber numbly nodded her head. "It's good to see you again, Shipmate. I have to say: normally I wouldn't object to having a beautiful woman in my arms but, uh… this is a little awkward."

Amber felt her cheeks start to burn as, with a start, she suddenly realized she was still laying in Leporidae's arms and she hurried surged upright.

"Um, hi!" Amber exclaimed as she brushed herself off, doing her best to mask her embarrassment. "Chief Leporidae! Uh… what are you doing here, Chief?"

"Hi," Leporidae replied, and much to Amber's further mortification, he looked _extremely_ amused. "To answer your question: I've been reassigned here."

"To the _Gabrielle_?" Amber immediately asked, and then promptly felt like kicking herself for asking such a stupid question. Of course it was the _Gabrielle_ ; where else were they having this conversation?

Fortunately, Leporidae didn't seem to notice.

"Yes," he replied, still sounding highly amused. "Given the damage done to Wayward Station, ODC decided it wasn't worth trying to repair the installation, and decided to abandon it instead. Of course, doing so left me without a job so… I got reassigned. And since apparently this ship is suffering from a lack of personnel… well, here I am."

"Well… it's _great_ to have you onboard Chief!" Amber reflexively blurted out, only to cringe a moment later as she realized, with the way she had worded it, it made her sound more excited than she actual was that he was onboard. Not that she was excited he was onboard. Or, at least to say, not in that manner…

"Yes, I could tell," Leporidae noted with a hint of humor, and causing a fresh wave of embarrassment to wash over Amber.

Coughing slightly to mask her mortification over her actions within the last few minutes, Amber did her best to recover her cool while Leporidae just stood there, seemingly content to wait for Amber to recover.

For the next few moments, neither of them said a word, causing a small awkward silence to fill the corridor. After a few moments, Amber decided she needed to say something to break the stalemate.

"So, uh… Chief," Amber started to say.

"By the way Owain…" Leporidae began at the exact same time, and the two of them immediately stopped talking to wait for the other to finish.

"Sorry Chief," Amber finally said after a moment, only for Leporidae to start to say, "What were you about to – "

They both fell silent again at the same time, and Amber couldn't help but start to smile at the ridiculousness of the entire situation. Glancing at Leporidae, she could see a grin start to creep onto his face as well. Finally, he raised his hand, as if he was a schoolkids waiting for the teacher to acknowledge him.

Amber inclined her head, and Leporidae smiled.

"Sorry about that," he said, humor evident in his voice. "What were you about to say Owain?"

"Oh! Um, I just realized that I, um, never thanked you. For saving my life," Amber said.

"Hey! Not a problem," Leporidae replied with a dazzling smile. "I'm sure you would have done the same if our positions had been reversed."

For some reason, Amber felt her cheeks begin to heat up at that, and she quickly cleared her throat.

"So, um, what were you about to say?" she quickly said.

"What? Oh, right. Well, I was just going to apologize. For nearly blowing out your eardrum back in that maintenance corridor," Leporidae apologetically said, but Amber gave an indifferent shrug.

"It was kind of an emergency, so I understand."

"You alright though?" Leporidae asked, concerned, and Amber quickly bobbed her head.

"The corpsmen took a look at it, said because I wasn't wearing my hearing protection properly, I'm going to have some ringing in that ear. But! It should fade after a few days," Amber quickly assured him, however Leporidae still looked remorseful.

"Oh man. Now I'm _really_ sorry for that. I had a blown eardrum once, so I know how it feels. Really sorry."

Amber smiled to show it didn't bother her but mentally, she couldn't help but be pleased by the way Leporidae was reacting.

For the next few moments, the two of them stood there in silence again, though this time the quiet was less awkward, and seemingly more content. It was finally broken when Leporidae sighed.

"Well," he began, sounding regretful. "As much as I'd love to stand here chitchatting, I gotta head to the CIC and talk to the TAO. This ship isn't really big enough to warrant the assignment of a full fledged chief master-at-arms, so… have to figure out what they expect me to do here."

"Well, in that case, let me let you go," Amber said, though she couldn't help but start to feel a small bit of regret.

Leporidae smiled at her, then started down the corridor before pausing.

"Owain," he called out, and Amber snapped her head up. "Was there something you needed from the Goat Locker? Because… I'm pretty sure you weren't here to see me."

Amber jumped. She had totally forgotten about the work order.

"Right! Um, I'm here to see my division commander, Chief Gunner's Mate Gilliam Carrizosa? We need to make some repairs to the main battery, and need him to sign off on a work order before we can do anything."

Leporidae nodded. "Yeah, he's the guy that just came in here, what, ten minutes ago? He just hit the sack, but given the circumstances, I'm sure he'll understand why he needed to be woken. Let me go get him."

"Thanks Chief," Amber said brightly, glad she didn't actually have to set foot inside the Goat Locker and get yelled at.

"Hey! Anytime, Owain."

Leporidae started to head back inside, but before he left, Amber was suddenly struck by an impulse.

"Chief?"

Leporidae turned around.

"My name is Amber," she told him.

"'Amber,'" he repeated. "I'll remember that. Job, by the way."

He pointed at himself then disappeared into the Goat Locker.

As he disappeared from sight, Amber resisted the urge to do a little dance. She couldn't wait until her shift was finally over so she could find Poolsie and let her know what just happened.

 **XXXXX**

 **Northern Byzas, Thracia Province, Actium  
May 7, 2545  
0324**

 **Adel**

Adel quietly tore the wrapper to his MRE open and carelessly tossed it to the side. Extending his meal, he took a bite –

\- and then immediate spat it out.

"You gotta be fucking kidding me," he snarled.

X looked up from his own meal.

"What? You got _another_ shitty MRE?" he exclaimed.

Adel vigorously nodded his head, even as he tried to scrap his tongue clean. "This was supposed to be fucking bacon and eggs. I don't know what the fuck that was, but that shit was definitely not bacon. Fuck! How come this shit always fucking happens to me!?"

He looked up as Sam entered the room.

"Hey Corporal!" he immediately exclaimed before Sam could get a word in. "What's with the fucking MREs? How come they're all fucked up?"

"What's wrong with that one?" Sam asked, frowning.

"You try it!"

Sam glanced at X, who shrugged.

Shrugging to himself, Sam took the MRE Adel offered him and took a bite. Adel waited as he watched Sam chew.

"Hmm," Sam said. "Again I ask: what's wrong with this?"

Adel stared at him, incredulous. "That's supposed to be bacon and eggs."

"…which it is…"

"… Okay, I don't know what you're eating, but _that's_ not fucking bacon," Adel insisted.

"Its military bacon," Sam explained. "It's got all sorts of preservatives, so its _supposed_ to taste like this."

Adel was outraged.

"Of all the fucking foods in the universe," he began, "how the fuck do you _fuck bacon up!"_

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see X shrugging.

"As Confucius once said: 'Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.'"

Adel stared at him.

"I dunno what the fuck that has to do with anything, and I'm pretty sure you just said that to sound smart, but fuck you," Adel angrily accused, causing X to laugh.

"Hey, fuckhead," Sam said, drawing Adel's attention back to him. "You want this shit or not?" he asked, waving the meal around.

Adel snorted. "Fuck no. You can have it."

Sam shrugged and then, much to Adel's disgust, took another bite. "Thought you weren't allowed to eat pig products anyway."

Adel stared at him. "Why the fuck would you think that?"

"Aren't you Muslim?" Sam asked through a mouthful of food. "You're Algerian, aren't you?"

"Maybe my ancestors were," Adel reported with a snort. "But I don't think anyone in my family has actually bothered following any religion in like, five generations."

"Fair enough," Sam replied. "Think my grandparents were Bahá'ì, but no one in my family actually practices."

Adel grunted, not particularly interested in talks about religion.

"Man, we're in a city, right?" he groaned instead. "There's gotta be all sorts of restaurants and grocery stores and shit around, right? Why we gotta eat MREs? Can't we go out and get some _actual_ food?"

"Sure," Sam indifferently replied, and Adel immediately got up but before he could go anywhere, Sam added, "Just don't do what Lieutenant Yates from Golf Company did."

X looked up. "Why? What happened?"

"Fucking dumbass butterbar had the same thought as Adel did," Sam began with a sneer. "Went to go steal a hamburger from the restaurant down the street. Only, he didn't fucking tell anyone. When he was coming back, sentries thought he was fucking Covenant, lit him the fuck up."

"Holy shit," X muttered. "Why the fuck didn't he say anything?"

"Heard he tried identifying himself. But a bunch of paratroopers were on guard duty, and they didn't know who the fuck he was," Sam explained, then paused. "Heard they hit him in the dick, man. Blew his fucking balls off."

Silence descended upon the room as both Adel and X gapped at him.

"That is _fucked_ up," X succinctly summarized.

Sam gave a dark laugh.

"You're telling me," he said as he polished off the MRE and tossed the wrapper away.

Adel quietly sat back down, strangely no longer hungry.

For the next few moments, the three of them sat there in silence, lost in their own thoughts, until they heard the sound of footsteps approaching them. Adel looked up in time to see the redhead Army corpsman – Doc Westley, if Adel remembered correctly – enter the room. She looked around before her eyes zeroed in on Adel.

"You," she announced, pointing. "I've been looking for you."

"Really?" Adel squeaked, then immediately cleared his throat and adopted a deeper voice. "I mean, _of course_ you were."

He gave her what he hoped was a suave smile, only it didn't seem to take as Westley fixed him with a disgusted look.

"Not like that, Private," she announced in a slightly exasperated tone. "I meant: I just wanted to check up on your hand."

Adel jumped and automatically glanced at his injured hand. He had honestly forgotten all about it at this point.

Feeling his cheeks begin to burn with embarrassment as Sam and X unabashedly began giggling in the background, Adel hastily stuck his hand out for Westley to take a look. He tried to put on a brave face, but he couldn't help but look away as Westley roughly began tearing away the bandages.

"Yeah, that's what I thought: biofoam has already broken down," she announced as she reached into her med kit and pulled out a can of biofoam. She shook it, only for it to let out an empty _clung_ sound. She tossed it away with a slightly annoyed look, and pulled out a fresh one instead.

Extending the nozzle, Adel winced as the sensation of ants crawling under his skin began emanating from his injuries hand.

"How are you fixed for pain?" Westley asked as she put away the can and broke out a fresh bunch of bandages.

"I'm good," Adel said as stoically as he could. Westley fixed him with a hard gaze.

"If you're trying to impress me with how 'tough' you are, you should know that I just spent a month in the field with a bunch of paratroopers, many of whom tried to do the same thing you're doing now," she drily noted. "It didn't impress me back then; I guarantee it won't impress me now."

"Well… I could… probably… use some pain killers," Adel sheepishly admitted.

Westley nodded, as if that was what she was expecting, and pulled out some pills.

"Take two of these with water. Should take about fifteen minutes for it to kick in," she commanded. "Let me wrap up your hand in the meantime."

Adel nodded and did as he was told. He waited as Westley began wrapping a fresh band of bandages around his wound.

He looked up when someone else unexpectedly entered the room, and silently swore as he realized it was Lancelot.

"Don't get up," Lancelot commanded, even as Adel tried to do just that. "As you were gentlemen, as you were."

'Sir," Sam said in acknowledgement. "Something I can help you with, sir?"

"Nope," Lancelot simply said. "Just making my rounds, checking up on everyone. How's everyone doing? You guys able to get some breakfast?"

"Yes, sir," Sam and X replied, with Adel mumbling along.

"Could use with something else besides MREs though, sir," X noted.

Lancelot shrugged.

"Well, if you get a chance, feel free to scavenge from the various restaurants around the area: ain't nobody around to complain anymore," he reported. "Just be smart about it: don't do it in a way that will get you killed. Or worse."

Adel shivered and reflexively crossed his legs as Lancelot walked up to Sam.

"How are you fixed in terms of ammo, Corporal?" Adel heard him ask.

"Well, sir, we could _always_ use more ammo," Sam replied.

"And rockets," X added.

"Especially if what you and Lieutenant Silva were saying in terms of this upcoming assault," Sam said. "Sounds like we're gonna need every bullet and grenade… and rocket, we can get our hands on. Problem will be trying to carry it all though. Don't want to overburden my Marines 'cause otherwise, we just won't be able to move."

Lancelot nodded.

"I can give you a couple of my guys," Lancelot declared. "Get them to act like ammo bearers."

"Works for me, sir. Won't hurt to have a couple of mules."

"Right. I'll arrange it."

Adel looked up as Lancelot walked over to him and Westley.

"How are you doing, Private?" he asked.

"Good, sir," Adel immediately replied.

"Just ready to get back into the fight," he added with as much enthusiasm he could muster.

"You'll get your chance, Marine," Lancelot assured him, before turning to Westley. "Doc, how's the leg?"

"I'm still good to go, sir," she quickly reported.

"Good to hear. But you let me know the moment that changes, alright?" Lancelot replied as he placed his hand on Westley's shoulder.

Adel winced as Westley put the final touches on his hand, but he wasn't so distract as to not notice how Lancelot's hand seemed to linger on Westley's shoulder a bit long than was necessary, and how Westley seemed to instinctually lean in closer to it. But before he could comment on it, X suddenly spoke up.

"Sir, I've been meaning to ask," he began, "but you guys are the 222nd Airborne Division, right?"

Lancelot withdrew his hand and glanced at him.

"Recognize the division shoulder sleeve insignia?" he asked, and X nodded. "Very good Lance Corporal. Don't know too many Marines that bother themselves with learning Army divisions. Yeah, we're 222nd."

"Oh, that's because I cheated a bit, sir," X modestly admitted. "I know someone in the unit."

"Yeah? Who? Maybe I know 'em."

X opened his mouth to reply, but before he could say anything –

" _LT, this is Mauser."_

Lancelot brought his hand up to his ear. "Go ahead."

" _Sorry to bother you, sir, but I need you to come over to OP Six and take a look at something."_

"Copy. I'll be right there."

Lowering his hand, Lancelot glanced around the room.

"If you haven't done so already, take this time to get some food and rest up," Lancelot commanded. "Word from up top is, once we start this attack, we're not going to stop until every one of these motherfuckers are dead. No matter how long that might take. I'll send the two guys over as soon as I can, Corporal, though I should warn you I can't guarantee their quality: I've only got so many paratroopers to go around."

"As long as they don't shoot us in the fucking back, sir, or accidently blow themselves up; I'll take whatever I can get," Sam stated.

"You might regret saying that," Lancelot pointed out somewhat sardonically. "But alright. Gentlemen."

"Sir, if you don't mind, I'd like to tag along," Westley suddenly said as she climbed to her feet.

Lancelot shrugged.

"Sure, why not Doc," he said, sounding somewhat indifferent, but there was no masking the way his eyes seemed to light up at the suggestion.

Adel watched the two of them leave the room, and he couldn't help but shake his head in disgust. No wonder Westley wasn't impressed with him: she already got dazzled by someone else. And of course it was the fucking lieutenant.

For a brief moment, Adel thought about reporting them, as he was pretty sure what they were doing was against military regulations, but then he mentally shrugged. Whatever; it wasn't his fucking problem. And besides: Adel had a feeling that if they lost Lancelot for whatever reason, Silva would use that opportunity to take over. And even in the short time Adel had known the two men, he could tell Lancelot was by far the more rational of the two. So maybe it was better this way.

Mind made up, Adel reached into his bag for another MRE. Hopefully he'd get a bit luckier this time around. Worse came to worse, he could always just ratfuck the deserts and save the main entrees for another day.

 **XXXXX**

 **Central Byzas, Thracia Province  
May 7, 2545  
0349**

 **Selene**

Selene clutched her blanket around her a bit tighter as she trudged through the snow. Unfortunately, at this point, she was no longer entirely sure where she was going.

At the urging of Shin, she had led them back to the nearest subway station, in the hopes that it would lead them back underground where they could wait out the coming barrage. Unfortunately, either the fighting in the city had been far worse than Selene had realized, or when the UNSC had blown up the subway station, they had done a very thorough job, as not only had the station she had led them to been completely obliterated, so too had been the next _two_ stations they had attempted to get to.

With the threat of impending doom literally hanging over their heads, and not knowing how much time they had before the coming storm finally arrived, in desperation, Selene had suggested taking shelter under the Ellison Bridge. The bridge would be nowhere as secured as being underground, however Selene did know that several of the concrete piers had metal storage shelters embedded directly into them that were mostly hidden from the public eye; due to the site being a rather popular place among homeless people to obtain illicit drugs, Selene had been there multiple times in her capacity as an officer of the law and thus, was fairly familiar with the area.

Or, at least, she thought she did. Unfortunately with how badly damaged this city was, a lot of landmarks and signs Selene normally depended on to find her way around were gone. As a result, at this point, she was just kind of stumbling around in the dark.

And when she said stumbling, she _literally_ meant stumbling.

"Whoa! Careful there," Shin quietly called out as he managed to catch Selene right before she fell flat onto her face.

"Thanks," she mumbled as she regained her footing. She glanced down at her feet. Though it was too hard to actually see, she could tell her feet were completely soaked. Her boots were supposed to be waterproof, but they weren't exactly rubber galoshes, and were probably never intended to be soaked like this.

"We got to stop," she declared. "My feet are completely soaked, and they're freezing up. If I don't find some way to dry them up, I'm going to get frostbit."

"Nonsense," Shin retorted. "You need a few more hours of exposure before we need to start worrying about that. Just keep going. Besides, we're almost there."

"How would you know?" Selene grumbled, even as she took another step. "I'm not even sure where we are anymore. And this is your first time in the city."

"First time, yes," Shin confirmed, "but we did several flyovers of the city before finally landing. Saw the bridge a couple of times – hard to miss, being the largest bridge in the city and all that. But I do remember seeing _that_ building in the general vicinity of the bridge."

He pointed at a nearby building, but either it was too dark or Selene was looking at the wrong one, as the one she was staring at looked no differently from another of the other buildings surrounding it.

"So, we should be seven? ten? blocks away," he finished.

Selene couldn't help but raise an eyebrow in disbelief at that.

"Pretty big margin for error," she noted.

"Well, I was measuring from the air so, you know, did the best I could."

Selene frowned, but didn't say a word. Given that _she_ didn't know where they were, even though she should have, she didn't exactly have room to complain. Hopefully though they would come across something that she could recognize, and confirm whether or not Shin was correct. After that, then they could figure out the best way of protecting themselves from the upcoming UNSC bombardment.

Speaking of which…

"So," Selene began. "Question about this attack: how do we know when it begins? Will there be some sort of signal? Like a flare or an air raid siren?"

"Yes, Officer Riddle: in an effort to warn people, UNSC will announce over the radio the exact moment they're going to start attacking," Shin sarcastically replied. "But wait! If we did that, wouldn't the Covenant know about it too?"

"I was just asking," Selene snapped, more than slightly annoyed by Shin's sarcasm. "I don't know how these things work. I'm not _in_ the military, so I've never seen or participated in something like this."

"Fair enough," Shin admitted. "No, there's not going to be a signal. Basically, as part of the planning stages, High Command will determine what time they want the attack to start, and everyone has until that time to get ready: bring up ammo, find targets, set their sights, or whatever. Then, once the appointed time – or 'H-hour' as we call it – arrives, _maybe_ there'll be an announcement over the radio, but for the most part, everyone just opens up at the same time, to try and maximize surprise."

"This is why I'm saying we really need to find shelter because the moment the bombardment begins, there's not going to be any warning; one moment it'll be quiet, the next, fucking explosions everywhere. Be like the goddamn apocalypse."

Selene couldn't help but shiver at the thought. But then again, maybe it would be better that way: instantly being killed by something she never saw coming, as opposed to being killed by a danger she _should_ have seen, but somehow missed.

With her question so thoroughly answered, Selene found she didn't really have anything else to ask, so instead, she pulled her blanket a bit tighter against herself and did her best to warm up. But unfortunately, it was a pointless battle. At this point, she was so cold, she was finding it hard to shiver. She didn't think she'd ever been this cold in her life before; sure, she had worked snow days before, mostly directing traffic when the traffic lights failed for whatever reason, but she could usually retreat back into her warm patrol car if worse came to worse. Right now though, there was no such relief, and the cold was absolutely relentless.

They continued to trudge through the snow, all the while Selene felt her body grow more and more numb. Finally, she decided she couldn't take it anymore.

"So," she began, both in an effort to distract herself from the cold, as well as fill the silent void that had sprung up between them. "Where are you from anyways?"

Shin snorted.

"Question of my life," she heard him mutter. More loudly though, he said, "I'm from all over."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I'm a military brat. My old man was a sergeant major in the Army. Got stationed all over the UNSC," Shin explained. "We were constantly on the move. Never stayed in one place for very long. Longest time we spent in one place was, I think, Tribute, for two years. Aside from that: all over. Colonies, planets, moons, even a couple space stations - you name it."

"That… must have been rough," Selene said, sympathetically.

"Not really," Shin said with a verbal shrug. "Sure, I didn't have any friends growing up, but I learned how to be independent real quick. Plus, I quickly found ways to entertain myself."

"Well, at least you had your family…?" Selene started to say, but as she turned around, she saw Shin shaking his head. "No?"

"No siblings of any kind. Mom walked out when I was three, leaving my dad to raise me alone. Only, he was kind of an asshole who didn't know how to deal with kids. So, he treated me like one of his soldiers. Only, guess what dad! Can't treat kids like that!" Shin shook his head, as if shaking off a bad memory. "He ended up shipping me off to military school the moment I turned fourteen, which was both good and bad for different reasons. Kept pushing me to join the military, so I ended up joining the Air Force, just to spite him."

"Dad always took the military rivalries a bit too far," Shin mused. "Never thought he would disown me for it."

"Oh man, I'm sorry to hear that," Selene exclaimed, regretting asking this question, but Shin waved his hand dismissively.

"At this point in my life, it's all water under the bridge," he assured her. "But enough about me: what about you? I get the feeling you're not a native of this colony."

"You got good instincts then," Selene compliment. "No, I'm not from Actium."

"Where from then?"

"Reach."

"'Reach!?'" Shin exclaimed. "You're from fucking _Reach!?_ As in, heart of the UNSC, Reach?"

"There's only one colony called Reach," Selene pointed out. "But yeah, that one."

"Then what the fuck are you doing on some ass backwards colony like this one!?" Shin immediately exclaimed.

"Hey! Actium isn't that bad!" Selene retorted, before glancing around. "I mean, it _wasn't._ "

"It is compared to fucking Reach. Jeez, everybody wants to move to fucking Reach. Never met someone who wanted to _leave_."

"Well… to be honest… I didn't exactly have a choice," Selene reluctantly admitted.

That caught Shin's attention, and he immediately looked interested, but Selene quickly shook her head.

"Not that interested in going over it now," she told him. "Maybe some other time."

"It better be a good fucking story, holy shit," she heard Shin mutter. "Everyone wants to go there, 'pecially nowadays. The one fucking place in the galaxy the Covenant couldn't attack 'cause they'd get their asses handed to them, and she wanted to _leave?"_

Selene didn't say a word. Instead, she looked up as she spotted Ellison Bridge abruptly looming out of the darkness, and she mutely let out a sigh of relief. Maybe once they got settled in, she would actually be able to take off her boots and take care of her feet.

Taking a moment to regain her bearings, Selene led Shin towards one of the shelters she remembered that was nearby.

"You sure this place is going to be safe?" she heard Shin asking as she searched for the entrance.

"Not sure," Selene admitted, "as I've never been shot at by heavy artillery. But we've had a couple of gunfights with drug dealers in the past before around here, and we've seen rifle rounds hit these doors and fail to make it through. So… I think so?"

"Well, _that_ doesn't tell me anything," Shin grumbled. "As a general rule of thumb, police rounds have a tendency to be underloaded as you guys have to worry about silly things like 'over penetration.'"

Selene would have rolled her eyes, but at this point, she was getting completely numb, both physically, and to Shin's more callous nature. Instead, she looked around for the door.

As the storage areas were just that, intended for storage, they weren't supposed to be easily seen by the public. Because of that, Selene had to search a couple of piers for the right one, but eventually she found what she was looking for.

"Here we go," Selene said as she grabbed the handle and moved to open it.

"Hang on Riddle," she vaguely heard Shin say from behind her, sounding concerned, as she wretched the door open. "Something's not – "

Before Selene could respond, a dark shadow immediately leapt out from the room and slammed into her!

Selene hit the ground hard, but fortunately the snow mostly cushioned her fall. Adrenaline spiking, Selene immediately retaliated, and without thinking, head-butted the figure as hard as she could in the face. With her head as numb as it was, it didn't hurt as much as it could have, but Selene still felt the blow. Nevertheless, she was at least able to knock the figure off her, at least long enough for her to regain her bearings.

Very much aware that the figure was only slightly stunned, and not yet neutralized, Selene hurriedly patted the ground around her, looking for a weapon but coming short so she instead grabbed a handful of snow and hurtled straight into her attacker's eyes. The figure reeled back, giving Selene a chance to trip him, knocking him to the ground. She quickly scrambled up to her feet, reached down to her waistband, and ripped out her sidearm. She leveled it, and was just about to pull the trigger –

"WAIT! I'm human, HUMAN!"

Selene immediately lowered her firearm, panting hard as she stared at the figure cowering on the ground in front of her. It took her a few seconds to calm down enough to process what she was seeing: a young man – well, more like a boy, really – wearing a thick blanket with a small backpack strapped to his chest, and covering his head as he eyed the gun in Selene's hands with a panicked expression.

Selene slowly exhaled, causing a small cloud of steam to form in front of her.

"Fuck," she mouthed as she tried her best to calm down. Putting her gun away, she took a step back, only to violently flinch as she sensed someone moving beside her, but it was only Shin. She immediately glared at him.

"Thanks for the help," she grumbled. Shin shrugged.

"What'd you want me to do? You were in the way," he noted, and as much as it annoyed her, Selene had to admit he had a point. "So, what do we have here?"

Having finally calmed down enough to think straight, Selene glanced back at the boy, only to see that he had backed up a bit, and was now eyeing both her and Shin with a weary expression.

Mentally sighing, Selene shot Shin a look, one where she tried to convey the fact that she wanted to deal with this, and that he should keep his mouth shut, before slowly dropping down into a crouch to make herself look less threatening. She tried to call forth all the police training she had on dealing with traumatized people, before slowly lifting her hands to show that she was unarmed.

"Hi," she said in a soft but gentle voice. "My name is Officer Selene Riddle. I'm sorry about what happened just now. Are you alright? Do you need some first aid?"

The kid stared at her, then slowly shook his head.

"No, I'm okay," he said, and Selene noted how hoarse he sounded.

Selene glanced at him skeptically, but didn't try to contradict him. Instead, she simply nodded and asked, "Do mind telling us your name?"

The boy stared at, almost incomprehensibly, before nodding.

"Clifton Roer, ma'am" he said. "But everyone calls me Cliff."

Selene nodded, then gave him a warm smile.

"It's nice to meet you Cliff," she said, and then fell silent. What was she supposed to do now again?

Looking around, Selene spotted the open door to the storage shelter, and suddenly realize that was probably where Cliff had been hiding in. She nodded in the direction of door.

"Were you hiding inside one of those storage rooms? To try and take cover from the Covenant?" she gently asked and watched as Cliff nodded. "We – " she gestured at Shin " – had been hoping to do the same thing. Do you mind if we join you?"

She glanced at Cliff and watched as a range of emotions flash over his face, and he seemed to cling to his backpack just a bit tighter. For a moment, Selene was sure he was going to decline, and she was just about ready to nod and walk away to find someplace else to take cover in, when Cliff reluctantly nodded.

"Thanks!" Selene said as brightly as she could, and waited until Cliff climbed to his feet before following him into the room.

Walking up to the room, Selene was immediately blasted by a wave of heat, and she couldn't help but close her eyes and let out a groan of pleasure.

Behind her, she could hear Shin walking up and looking around.

"Nice place you got here," he said with a hint of sarcasm. "Warm and cozy. Don't know about that fire though: that's probably going to light up every single thermal sensor in the city."

Selene's eyes snapped open and looked around wildly. Sure enough, sitting in a small depression in the middle of the room, was a small fire, the source of all the heat. Suddenly feeling concerned, Selene glanced at Shin, but before he could say anything, Cliff spoke up.

"There's fires burning all over the city, dude," he pointed out. "Why would the Covenant care about this one?"

Selene had to admit, Cliff had a point. But at the same time, as much as she wanted to enjoy the warmth, she didn't want it to come at the cost of her life.

She glanced at Shin, but Shin didn't seem to have anyway to dispute what Cliff said as all he did was shrug, before walking over to the fire. Just before he sat down though, Selene noticed him sweeping to the ground and picking something up. What it was, Selene couldn't tell. Nor did she find herself really caring as she was too excited at the chance to actual be able to warm herself up.

Gleefully plopping herself down next to the fire, Selene immediately took off her boots. Easing her soaked socks off, she carefully laid them out on the ground near the fire to try and dry them out, before massaging her feet in an effort to restore some blood flow to them. For a few moments, all three of them just sat there, trying to get warm.

As Selene sat there though, she couldn't help but notice Shin was staring at Cliff with a rather intense look on his face. She glanced at him, trying to figure out what was up, but Shin refused to so much as even glance in her direction. Instead, he just glared at Cliff, and Selene could tell Cliff had noticed as he was beginning to shuffle in his seat rather uncomfortably.

"So, Cliff," Selene conversationally began in order to break the uncomfortable silence that was beginning to settle across the room. "If you don't mind me asking, how'd you know about this place?"

Cliff glanced at her with a nervous look on his face. "Um… I used to hang out here after class with my buddies, uh, smoking cigarettes so our parents didn't find out."

"Oh, you a native of this area?" Selene asked. "Where from?"

"Edgewood," Cliff quietly replied. "Out – "

"West," Selene finished. "Yeah! I'm pretty familiar with that area. Used to patrol there when I first became a city police officer. Nice neighborhood. Still go there every now and then; there's this one donut shop that I really liked to go to. You familiar with Buckers over on 11th?"

Cliff frowned as he quickly turned away from Shin to stare at Selene.

"The one with all those cream filled fritules?" he nervously suggested.

"That's the one!" Selene encouragingly replied.

Cliff bobbed his head as he slowly became more animated. "Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was my Scoutmaster – Horacio Hoffman – it was his favorite place too. Used to bring us there every time after a meet, though less so after the store changed owners."

Selene frowned.

"'Horacio Hoffman,'" she quietly repeated. "That name sounds familiar to me. Wasn't he… wasn't he that one legged former Army medic?"

Cliff visibly brightened.

"You knew Mister Hoffman?" he excited said.

Selene nodded, then hesitated.

"Not personally," she admitted. "But I know he used to volunteer – like, all the time – for all the community outreach programs and festivals my department used to – "

"What the fuck are you doing here?"

Both Selene and Cliff jumped at Shin's unexpected question. Frowning at the open hostility in his voice, Selene shot a questioning look in his direction, however Shin either didn't see it, or was outright ignoring her. Instead, all he was doing was staring intently at Cliff, specifically the bag he was hugging against his chest.

Wondering where both the hostility and the question had come from, Selene nevertheless glanced over in Cliff's direction, about to tell him he didn't need to answer that question if he didn't feel like it, but before she could –

"I'm, uh, I'm… um… am hiding from the Covenant," he stammered.

That caused Selene to shut her mouth, and she couldn't help but shift her gaze from Shin over to Cliff. Just based on the way he had worded that, it was clear to Selene that he was lying. What she couldn't figure out though, was _why_ he would need to lie about something like that.

Unfortunately, she wasn't the only one to notice as Shin let out a loud derisive snort.

"Yeah, _right…_ " he sneered. "I'm not a fucking idiot you know; what the fuck are you _really_ doing here?"

Selene could see Cliff glancing in her direction, obviously asking for help, but Selene found she really couldn't offer any. Instead, she glanced back and forth between Shin and Cliff, and she couldn't help but feel like she was missing something. Why did Shin seemed so pissed off, and why would Cliff feel the need to lie about something so simple? If he wasn't hiding from the Covenant, then what was he doing here?

And yet, try as she could, Selene simply couldn't think of an alternative explanation, so instead, she kept silent, and waited for an answer.

Seeing no help forthcoming from her, Cliff deflated.

"I'm trying to find my parents," he finally admitted, and this time Selene could tell he was being honest. Yet, despite this, his answer caused her frown to only deepen; after all, there was nothing wrong with that answer. So… why didn't he just lead with that?

"Your parents?" Selene repeated, in an effort to distract herself from the oddity of the situation, as well as an effort to reclaim control of the conversation. "You got separated from them?"

"Not… exactly," Cliff admitted. "They were at work when the Covenant made landfall."

Selene nodded. Right. That made sense. That would explain why Cliff was alone at the moment. But… now that she thought of it, what was Cliff even still doing here in this part of the city? Shouldn't he have been evacuated with the rest of the civilians hours ago? Unless of course he got caught behind enemy lines like Selene and Shin did, which seemed to be the most obvious explanation. But if that was the case, why didn't he just _say_ so?

"Where did your parents work?" Selene asked.

"At the factory on 21st and Ticonderoga?"

Selene immediately felt her blood run cold at that, and she reflexively glanced in Shin's direction, but he was still staring rather intently at Cliff, leaving her to break the news to him by herself.

"Cliff…" she slowly began. "I… I don't know how to break this to you, but… that was, like, the _first_ place the Covenant hit…"

To Selene's surprise, Cliff began nodding.

"I know," he confessed. "But… it's my parents. I gotta… I gotta try and find them, regardless." Then he glanced at Selene with a hopeful expression on his face. "Maybe… maybe you guys could help me?"

"Yeah…" Shin dragged out. "I don't think so."

Without warning, he pulled out a gun and pointed it straight at Cliff.

Selene jumped and looked around wildly. Where did…

With a start, she realized that was actually _her_ gun, and she reflexively reached down to her waistband. Naturally, her firearm wasn't there.

"Shin, what are you _doing!?"_ Selene hissed even as she mentally tried to recover. "Put that fucking gun away!"

Shin didn't respond and instead, just stared at Cliff with a dark look on his face.

"Dude; what the hell!?" Cliff demanded to know, his eyes wide with fear.

"Shut the fuck up you goddamn traitor. You don't get to speak unless I fucking let you, understand?" Shin hissed, causing Selene to jump.

"Traitor? Shin, what are you – "

Selene reflexively caught the item that Shin tossed at her, and she realized it was the object he had picked up from the ground when they first entered the room. Looking it over, Selene realized it was an insignia of some sorts.

"You know what that is?" Shin asked.

"A jackalope insignia?" she suggested, glancing on the image embroidered on one side.

"It's the SSI of the UNSC Army's 222nd Airborne Division," Shin replied. "Remember that body we found a few hours ago lying in the snow? It's the same unit that arrived in the city just yesterday. _His_ unit."

"'His unit?' What are you…"

Selene trailed off as Shin stalked forward and grabbed the small bag Cliff was clinging onto. With a gun still pointed at his face, there wasn't anything Cliff could do to protest as Shin overturned the bag and out came –

A military uniform.

"This is yours, ain't it?" Shin sneered as he tossed the jacket over to Selene for her to look at. "Don't even try and deny it motherfucker, it's got your name all over."

Turning the jacket over, sure enough, Selene spotted the name tag that read "Roer."

"I… I don't understand," Selene admitted.

"This motherfucker is a goddamn deserter," Shin sneered. "Where are your teammates, motherfucker? Do you even know if they're still alive? I bet not 'cause you fucking ditched them!"

He half-turned to Selene to address her, while keeping one eye on Cliff.

"This fucker here probably ditched his teammates while they were under fire. If he's willing to ditch his buddies while under fire, what do you think he would have done to _us_ when shit hit the fan?" he pointed out. "No, we're better off without him. In fact, I should probably do everyone a favor and shoot him right now!"

He lifted the gun, as if to shoot and alarmed, Selene quickly grabbed the slide, shoving it backwards a bit, just enough to put the gun out of battery.

"Shin, enough!" she insisted, and glared at him until he relented. "Give me the damn gun."

Shin looked annoyed, but at Selene's insistent look, relented.

Carefully removing her pistol from Shin's hand, Selene quickly put it away before turned back to Cliff.

"Cliff," she quietly began, "is this all true?"

Cliff didn't say a word, but Selene could see tears pouring down his face, and he reluctantly nodded.

Selene slowly inhaled as she tried to think of what to do. This was all too much for her to deal with right now. Normally she wasn't one to judge people for their mistakes, but unfortunately there was too much at stake right now to be in the forgiving mood. Plus, with Shin apparently about ready to _murder_ the man… perhaps it _was_ best they go their separate ways.

"I think," Selene mutely began, "that it's in everyone's best interest that we go our separate ways. And I think it's in _your_ best interest," she said pointedly at Cliff, "if you don't follow us."

Cliff didn't say a word. He only sat there, crying, and Selene felt a surge of pity towards him.

"But," she added, "seeing as how you were here first, _we'll_ leave."

Out of the corner of her eye, Selene noticed Shin's head snapping in her direction, but she ignored him.

Grabbing her still damp socks and sliding them onto her feet, she tossed on her boots and climbed to her feet.

"Good luck," was all she could think to say.

Cliff didn't say a word in response, but as she and Shin headed to the door, he suddenly called out, "I… I was just looking for my family!"

Before Selene could stop him, Shin whirled around.

"Look, asshole: we're all trying to survive here," he snapped. "But we didn't turn our backs on our friends in the process. You did. Fuck you."

And with that, he marched out of the room.

Selene lingered around for a moment to throw Cliff a sympathetic look, but Cliff didn't even look her. Instead, he hung his head and didn't make a noise as Selene slid the door shut behind her.

Joining Shin, they took off down the street.

It wasn't until they had gotten about a block away before Shin suddenly spoke up.

"Well," he brightly began, and to Selene's surprise, absolutely none of the murderous rage he had directed at Cliff was present. "That was exciting. But we lost our safe room. Now – "

Selene punched him. As hard as she could. It left her knuckles sporting, but it at least cause Shin to stumble, and he fell to his knees.

"Don't EVER do that again," she snapped. "And don't touch my gun without my permission either ever again, got it!?"

"Alright," Shin mumbled as he massaged his jaw. "Fair enough. Point made. You got it. You're in charge."

Selene stared at him, suspicious at how quickly he had given in. Nevertheless, there wasn't much she could do aside from nod her head. One was thing was sure though:

\- the sooner she got out of this city and specifically, _away_ from Shin, the better off she would be.

 **XXXXX**

 **Camp Hoxha, Thracia Province  
May 7, 2545  
0407**

 **Marcus**

Marcus sat on an overturned ammo box inside the warehouse, staring through the open bay door, watching as the quartermasters load up his rig with boxes upon boxes of 120mm mortar shells. He supposed he should be out there, helping them like Dresden and Orlović were doing instead of just sitting here playing with a carabiner clip, but he found that he just… couldn't.

It wasn't like he didn't know what was going on. They just had just been briefed, so Marcus knew that in about one and half hours, the entire UNSC Army was going to attack the Covenant. And that, as part of that attack, the Army was planning on practically leveling the city with heavy artillery. But in order to do that, the troops on the front were going to need ammo. A lot of it. Which Marcus and his entire battalion was to provide.

All of this made sense to Marcus. He was in a logistical unit, therefore his job was to provide logistics. What he just couldn't comprehend was… why.

He knew he was being childish. He knew he was being ridiculous. But for some reason, after having survived a full day of combat yesterday, mentally, Marcus had kind of assumed that… his part was done. That he could go home and recover from all the horrors he had seen. And it wasn't really until he had seen Orlović loading up his machine gun again did it occur to him that: Marcus had to go back out there. Out into the wild west. Out into the unknown where so many people, good people, had been hurt or killed. That… he had gotten lucky yesterday, making it out unscathed. But who was to say that luck would continue to hold today?

Marcus was only nineteen years old. His life had barely begun. He still had so much to see, so much to do. Simply put: he didn't want to die. He didn't want to go out there because if he did, then the chances of him dying started to get really high. At the same time, if he _didn't_ go out there…

Well, he didn't know what would happen to him. But surely it wouldn't be as bad as dying, right?

A heavy hand landed on Marcus' shoulder, causing him to jump, but Dresden didn't seem to notice. Instead, he let out a loud groan as he eased himself onto the ground next to Marcus.

"Gawd, growing old sucks," he complained as he removed his rifle from around his shoulders and placed it on his lap. "But I guess that's the cost of living, right? How you doing Marcus?"

Marcus nervously glanced at him and opened his mouth to speak, but found he couldn't really find his words.

"I'm a… I'm a… I'm a…" was all he could say.

Dresden immediately turned to him with a concerned look on his face. "Olsen. You alright?"

"I'm a…" Marcus stammered as he tugged at his collar. Was it just him, or was the room getting really warm.

"Marcus, you're beginning to hyperventilate. Stick your head between your knees."

Feeling like the room was beginning to spin, Marcus proceeded to do just that.

"Now breathe with me, Marcus. Inhale."

Dresden loudly inhaled and Marcus found himself following along.

"And exhale."

Marcus exhaled alongside Dresden.

"Again. Breathe… exhale. Breathe… exhale."

Marcus took another deep breath, and then released it slowly.

"Good. Keep breathing like that until the room stabilizes, okay?"

From between his knees, Marcus nodded as he took another deep breath. Breathe… exhale. Breathe… exhale.

After a few moments of doing just that, he spotted Dresden looking at him from underneath the crook of his knee.

"Still with me Marcus?" Dresden asked, his concern clear and evident in his voice. Marcus nodded. "Alright. Well, sit up when you feel like you can, alright?"

Marcus nodded and continued to do his breathing exercises as Dresden's face disappeared.

Breathe… exhale. Breathe… exhale. Breathe… exhale.

After a few more minutes of doing that, Marcus finally got to the point where he no longer felt like he was going to pass out, so he decided to sit up once more. Almost immediately, he spotted Dresden patiently sitting on the ground to his left, idly loading a rifle mag, and the sight nearly caused another panic attack in Marcus, but this time he was able to control it and force it down.

Dresden looked up.

"Feel better now?" he asked, a warm smile on his face. Marcus miserably nodded. "Okay. Do you… wanna talk about it?"

If Marcus was being honest, the answer would have been not really, as he didn't want Dresden to think less of him than he already did. At the same time, if there was some way Marcus could avoid going out onto the road again, if there was some option, he had to know.

"Sarge," he softly began. "Is there… some way… I could… _not_ go out today?"

He warily glanced at Dresden to see his reaction. To his relief, Dresden was staring back at him without a hint of judgement on his face. Unfortunately, he also didn't appear to be very optimistic.

"I'm sorry, Marcus," he said, and Marcus got the feeling he really meant it. "But unfortunately, after yesterday's losses, we no longer have the personnel to spare. We need everybody, including you."

Marcus felt like… well, he didn't know whether he wanted to cry or… or… what.

"You're nervous about going back out there, aren't you."

"I just thought… after everything we went through… I dunno. I thought we would get a break or something," Marcus confessed, and Dresden sadly shook his head.

"I'm afraid it doesn't work that way," he quietly said. "The Covenant aren't just going to let us take a day off, and… well, at this point, it's a race to see who attacks first: us, or them."

"See, that's the thing about war that people aren't quite able to grasp," Dresden continued. "War isn't just a 'one and done' thing. It's not a hundred meter dash where you're done in less than fifteen minutes. It's more like a marathon; you keep going for hours and hours and you keep at it and you keep at it because if you don't, you'll never win the race. But even then, it doesn't just end there because immediately afterwards, you have another marathon to run. And then another. And you keep going and by the time you collapse, you realized you've just run over a thousand kilometers."

"And I think that's the hardest thing about being a soldier. It's not the fighting or the blood or even the shouting and the orders. It's the fact that, once you're in the shit, it's relentless. It's nonstop and never ending. Day in and day out, you face the same issues, the same horrors, and you struggle to stay alert because otherwise you die, but at the same time, you have to figure out how to deal because otherwise you go insane…"

Dresden silently trailed off, leaving Marcus slightly discouraged. This was part of the reason why he never wanted to be a soldier. He didn't need this stress in his life. He didn't… want it.

"How do you _deal_ with something like that?" he couldn't help but ask.

That seemed to stir Dresden from his stupor, and he glanced at Marcus with a sad look on his face.

"Unfortunately, that's something you gotta figure out on your own; I can't tell you how to deal. I can only tell you _my_ method, but unfortunately, it might not work for you."

Marcus nodded in understanding, before glancing down at the floor. For a moment, no one said anything until –

"How do _you_ deal with it?" Marcus finally asked.

Dresden gave him a wiry grin.

"By reminding myself," he began, "of what the Covenant took from me."

"6TH PLATOON, MOUNT UP! WE'RE MOVING OUT!"

Both Marcus and Dresden looked up as their platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class Lindsay Scott, came walking into the room shouting at the top of her lungs. At once, everyone began to stir.

Dresden let out a mute sigh, before awkwardly climbing to his feet.

"Well, time to go earn a paycheck I guess," he glibly announced, before leaning towards Marcus. "You think you're going to be up for this?"

"No," Marcus flat out admitted. "But… I don't have a choice, do I?"

Dresden sighed.

"'Fraid not. Just… try and take it one step at a time, alright? Just focus on driving, and don't think of anything else."

Marcus nodded. Then, very reluctantly, he got up and headed out to the HEMTT with Dresden in tow.

"There you guys are! I was wondering where you fuckers were!" Orlović loudly greeted as Marcus and Dresden climbed into the cab. "What the fuck took you guys so long?"

"What, didn't you hear?" Dresden immediately retorted. "If the Covenant are fifteen minutes late to the war, then we don't have to fight at all."

Orlović let out an appreciative chuckle.

"Man, if it was only that easy," he declared, before zeroing on Marcus. "Marcus! You ready for this shit?"

Marcus nodded, doing his best to try and hide his uncertainty, but unfortunately it didn't seem to work as he could feel Orlović staring at him with a judgmental look, and Marcus shuffled uncomfortably.

"Meh," Dresden said as he slammed his door shut. "You've got time. Let's hit the road folks!"

Marcus nodded and thumb the ignition button. Immediately, the HEMTT roared to life. Thumbing on the night vision setting of his goggles, Marcus waited for the other vehicles in the convoy to pull out first, before falling in line.

Pulling out from the base gates, the entire convoy made their way towards Highway 270, and it wasn't long before Marcus found himself heading due north. Back towards the frontline. Back towards hell.

It was mostly quiet inside the cab; perhaps because it was still very early in the morning, but neither Dresden nor Orlović seemed particularly interested in talking with Marcus or with each other. That was something Marcus was actually fairly grateful for, as that allowed him to focus his sole attention on driving. He needed to, not only because it helped distract him from thinking about what he was getting himself into, but also because the road was actually kind of slippery – while this area hadn't seen too much snowfall overnight, the roads had refrozen, and with the invasion, virtually all civilian services had been suspended which meant no salt had been laid.

As they steadily plodded down the road, Marcus made sure to keep his focus on the truck in front of him, doing his best not to look around too much in case he spotted something lurking in the darkness. He tried to take some comfort on the fact that unlike yesterday, they weren't in the front of the column, but closer to the center, which meant they were surrounded by friendlies, but it didn't help very much. Nothing could really change the fact that Marcus knew, with every meter they drove, they traveled closer and closer to potential danger.

The sudden crackling of the radio caused Marcus to jump in fright, and he automatically started wildly looking around for some place to hide, but fortunately before he could do anything crazy, Dresden reached over and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. Even through his goggles, Marcus could see the concerned look on Dresden's face, and Marcus did his best to remain calm.

Without saying a word, Dresden grabbed the radio and brought it up to his ear. Marcus couldn't hear what was being said as Dresden was feeding the report through his headset, but as he lowered the receiver, his face was drawn and grim, and at that sight, Marcus felt a fresh wave of terror pass through him.

"Alright guys, listen up!" Dresden called out, breaking the silence that had engulfed the entire cabin. "Getting reports of Covenant Skirmishers roving the highway, raiding some of our supply convoys. 2nd Platoon just got hit outside of milestone twenty-five, which is a bit aways from us, but there could be more out there. Weapons: get them ready and be prepared for anything."

Marcus nodded, then nervously glanced down at his rifle, which was sitting in its cradle in the door. Glancing at the illuminated ammo counter, he could see his rifle was locked and loaded, which was good. Hopefully he wouldn't be needing it.

Overhead, he could hear Orlović racking his machine gun a couple of times, and as he glanced out the window, Marcus happened to noticed they were passing a milestone that read: KM Thirty-five. He shivered.

"Easy there Marcus," he heard Dresden say soothingly. "No need to worry just yet, okay? We're still twelve klicks out, and there's a pretty good chance the Covenant will be gone by the time we arrive. So… stay cool, alright?"

Marcus mutely nodded, assured by Dresden's confidence. Those were pretty good points.

 _ **KABOOM!**_

Marcus jumped in his seat as a brilliant blue explosion ripped through the underside of the lead vehicle! At the same time, green plasma bolts and purple needles began raining down on the entire convoy from all directions! The radio promptly burst into chatter as everyone started simultaneously speaking.

" _Contact, CONTACT!"_

" _Where the fuck are they!"_

"… _6-6 is down, I say again, 6-6 is…"_

" _Left side, left side!"_

"Man, me and my big mouth!" Dresden yelped as he brought his rifle to bear. "Orlović, you got eyes on!?"

"NEGATIVE! I AIN'T GOT A SOURCE!"

"Marcus, keep your foot on the accelerator and get us out of this mess! Orlović, keep your eyes peeled and as soon as you get eyes on, you're cleared hot to engage: don't wait for me!" Dresden roared as he grabbed the radio. "Net call, net call: all stations, keep this net clear, break! 6-1 to 6-2: do not stop the convoy, I say again, do NOT STOP!"

"Shit!" Marcus couldn't help but yelp as a trio of plasma bolts splattered against the windshield.

"Marcus! You good?" he heard Dresden yell.

"Yeah!" Marcus automatically yelled back.

"Alright, well, keep your head down and keep moving!" Dresden commanded. "As long as we don't stop, we'll be – "

 _CRACK!_

Without warning, a single purple crystal came lancing through the weakened windshield and slammed right into Dresden's head.

* * *

1\. **MAC:** according to Halopedia, a _Halberd-_ class destroyer like the UNSC _Gabrielle_ is equipped with two MACs of different sizes: one that is 1170mm (46") in diameter, and a smaller 647mm (25.5") one. For the purpose of this story, I've decided that the _Gabrielle_ is an older variant of the _Halberd_ class, and only comes equipped with _**one**_ large MAC.

I did this because I've noticed when I'm writing about Tariq and the twin-barreled Grizzly MBTs, for some reason I find it really hard to keep track of both barrels. (As in, I'm constantly forgetting about the second one.) So, for the sake of my own sanity, I'm just saying the _Gabrielle_ comes equipped with one barrel, and one MAC.

2\. **Job Leporidae** : originally, Leporidae was supposed to be a throwaway character, but as I was planning out the rest of the story, I realized I could actually use him. Otherwise, I would have given him a different first name as I generally don't like my main secondary characters sharing the same name (in this case, he shares the same first name with one of my characters from _MIA,_ Private Job Griffin.)


	39. Calling it Quits

**Calling it Quits**

Hello everyone. Sorry that this isn't an actual chapter update, but a status update. I thought it was best to let everyone know that after some careful thought and consideration, I've decided to call it quits with _Battle: Actium._ Yes, your eyes do not deceive you: I am officially canceling this story and abandoning it.

I've been writing this story for nearly a year and a half now, and during that time I feel like I've accomplished a lot, however, as is common with stories of this scope and nature, this fanfic has gotten far too complicated and bloated. In essence, it's too long and it's starting to drag. While it makes for a really bad story, for me personally, I think it's a good thing.

I've mentioned this a couple of times in the past, but this story to me has always been an experimental one. It was always supposed to be a place for me to try new things. I've never attempted to write a story with this many characters, each with their own character arc, over such a long length of time, and utilizing their own style of fighting, and I had always thought _Battle: Actium_ would give me a chance to try all of that at the same time.

But, with the benefit of hindsight, that was a mistake; this story is far too ambitious for someone of my limited writing ability. To use an analogy, it's like I was a couch potato who one day decided I wanted to run a marathon, only instead of doing the sensible thing which would have been to take it slow and train myself up, I signed up for the first race I could find and made it a fifth of the way through before realizing, "hehe, I'm in danger."

Among the multitude of mistakes, I think my most notable problem was that I allowed myself to get too distracted by the minutiae: rather than focus on the overall plot, I ended up giving a play by play for the entire battle which, for a single character focused on a single event, that would be okay, but not for a story with this many characters and this length of time. Really, the first red flag should have been when day one of the battle lasted a total of thirty-four chapters and nearly three hundred thousand words, and that's with the cuts I made.

Now, with that being said, I don't think this is necessarily a terrible story. It's something I feel like I could probably salvage. However, with the amount of material I would want to cut… at that point, I might as well just rewrite the damn thing. Which, I might end up doing. But not anytime soon as it's always frustrating to abandon a story when there are so many ideas and plot points I had that I never got a chance to get to.

So, where does this leave me? To be honest, I don't know. I had planned on making this my main story for the next year or so, but now that's obviously not going to happen and I just don't have anything else prepared. There's my other story, _Barracuda,_ but unfortunately, a number of plot points for that depended on this one, and with this one no longer being written, _Barracuda_ will be cancelled too (and will have been deleted by the time I post this note.)

I did have six chapters for _Battle: Actium_ already written out before I made the decision to drop it, which, if readers are interested, I'll go ahead and post, alongside a rough outline of what the end of _Battle: Actium_ would have looked like, as well as the fate of the characters. If that is something you are interested in, I strongly encourage you to leave a review or send me a PM because if I don't hear anything by next Friday, I'm going to assume no one is interested and I'm just going to leave this story as is.

Aside from that, I'm going to have to think about what I want to do next. Thank you to everyone who has left a review, sent me a PM, or even just followed/favorite this story. I kind of wish I could have finished it for you guys, but I guess I'm just going to have to add this story to the massive pile of fanfictions that have been abandoned halfway through over the years.


	40. Chapter 39

A number of readers have requested to see what I had left of this story so as promised, here's the remaining chapters, as well as an outline of how the rest of the story would have gone. Note: I'm thinking about doing a re-write of this story at some point in the future. If that does happen, I'll more than likely follow the events as shown in my outline which, as you might imagine, spoils everything I had planned. If that's something that might bother you, then I would recommend skipping the last chapter.

* * *

 **Chapter 39**

 **Highway 270, Thracia Province  
May 7, 2545  
0427**

 **Marcus**

Marcus' mouth hung open in horror as he stared at Dresden's body, hanging loosely in his seat, held in place by the safety harness. He couldn't think. He couldn't breathe.

This was not happening.

"WHERE THE FUCK IS THIS FIRE COMING FROM!? THEO! YOU GOT EYES ON!?"

Marcus could hear Orlović shouting in the background, but to him, it sounded distant and faded, as if Orlović was shouting from very far away. Marcus tried to respond, but found he couldn't move. All he could do was just continue to stare at Dresden's body.

"S…Sarge…?" he heard himself whisper, as if that would somehow magically bring Dresden back to life.

"FUCK! WAS THAT THEM? THEO, WHAT THE FUCK!"

Marcus tried to do something, tried to _say_ something, but he found he just couldn't. His body refused to react. It was as if someone had just hit the pause button on a holovid. All Marcus could do was stare.

"GODDAMN MOTHER – MARCUS, **LOOK OUT!** "

That caught Marcus' attention and he reflexively looked up –

\- only to immediately slam on the brakes to avoid crashing into the HEMTT in front of them, which had abruptly stopped in the middle of the highway for no apparent reason.

"OW, MOTHERFUCKER! WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT, MARCUS!?"

Marcus struggled to find his voice.

"Or…Or… Or…" Marcus stuttered.

"FUCK! THEO! WHY THE FUCK DID WE STOP!?"

"Orlović!" Marcus finally managed to gasp out.

 _SMASH!_

Something smashed into Marcus' window with enough force to leave a sizable dent. The noise of the outer layer of laminated glass breaking was enough to cause Marcus to nearly jump out of his skin, however at the same time, Orlović suddenly let out a triumphant cry.

"HA! GOT YOU MOTHERFUCKER!"

Brass casings began littering the roof of the cab as Orlović opened up on a spot in the distance just off to the left of the highway. Marcus could see Orlović's tracers bouncing all over the place in the distance, and at first Marcus thought he was shooting at nothing but air –

\- until the Covenant started shooting back.

 _CRACKCRACKTHUNK!_

Marcus let out a loud shriek of alarm as a series of multi-colored projectiles began hosing the HEMTT down. He could hear a loud _thunk_ noise reverberated through the cabin every time the vehicle was struck, and Marcus quickly found himself trying to hide under his steering wheel as he did his best to try and avoid getting hit. He could only pray the incoming fire wasn't enough to set off all the explosives they were carrying in the back.

"COME ON YOU FUCKS! COME AND GET SOME!"

Marcus could hear Orlović screaming at the top of his lungs, even as he hurriedly moved to reload his machine gun. Hearing how ferociously Orlović was fighting back, Marcus couldn't help feel a growing sense of shame at his own cowardice: he shouldn't be here, cowering under his steering wheel, he should be helping Orlović fighting off the Covenant attack.

At the same time, without Dresden, what was even the point? Dresden was clearly the only one who knew what to do around here, and with him… gone, how could Marcus hope to survive even the next few minutes? No, he couldn't do this!

Without warning, Marcus suddenly felt a surge of anger directed at everything: fucking Dresden for getting himself shot and leaving Marcus in this predicament. Fucking Army and the Actium Government for ruining his life's plans and putting him in this fucking position. Fucking Covenant for ruining everything and for _fucking shooting_ at him!

But most importantly, Marcus felt a surge of anger at _himself:_ fucking… why the fuck did he have to be such a fucking _coward._

With an inhuman snarl of anger, Marcus found himself grabbing his rifle and removing the safety. Because of the damage, his window would no longer open, so Marcus shoved his door open, pointed his rifle in the direction Orlović was shooting at, and let it rip.

"GAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Marcus found himself screaming at the top of his lungs as he simply held down on the trigger and unleashed his fury downrange. Fuck this place. Fuck everyone here too. But especially, _fuck the Covenant!_

"God dammit!"

His rifle let out a shriek of alarm to let him know he was out of ammo, and Marcus hurriedly moved to reload. Ejecting his empty magazine, he awkwardly shoved a fresh one in and as he did, he felt a drop of water land on his wrist. Reaching up, Marcus was startled to find tears were streaming down his face, and that realization only served to further fuel both his shame, and his anger.

"FUCK YOU!" he screamed at the top of his lungs as he emptied his magazine downrange once more.

"THEO, MARCUS: WHAT THE FUCK!? WHY THE FUCK AIN'T WE MOVIN'?"

Orlović's shout abruptly cut through Marcus' anger-induced battle haze, and he quickly lowered his rifle.

"Orlović! Dresden is…" Marcus hesitated. He couldn't say Dresden was dead, he just couldn't. "Theo is down!"

"WHAT!?" Orlović yelled back as he stopped shooting for a moment.

"Theo is down!"

"WHAT?"

"SARGE. IS. DOWN!"

"…WHAT?"

Marcus growled, but before he could yell once more, something slammed into the doorframe right over his head, sending sparks flying in all directions.

"Holy crap!" Marcus yelped. He lifted his rifle, only to find he was out of ammo, so he frantically reloaded and was just about to pull the trigger when –

"What are you guys shooting at?"

Marcus was a bit ashamed to admit, he screamed. Very loudly. Without thinking, he whirled around only to see –

"S… Sarge?" Marcus stuttered, unable to believe his eyes.

Sure enough, Dresden had undone his safety harness and was sitting up, looking at Marcus with a questioning look on his face. Even as he watched, Dresden reached up with a gloved hand, grabbed a hold of the purple crystal needle still sticking out from his helmet, and snapped it off.

Giving it a look of disgust, Dresden casually tossed it past Marcus, and right out through the open door.

"What are you guys engaging?" he asked again, but all Marcus could do was gape at him. So, instead, Dresden reached up and gave the roof a solid punch. "BILLY!"

"YEAH?"

Despite the gunfire, there was no disguising the relief in Orlović's voice.

"What are you shooting at?"

"I GOT EYES ON COVIE POSITIONS, SARGE. OUR TEN O'CLOCK, 'BOUT THREE HUNDRED METERS OUT! THEY LAYIN' THE HATE ON US!"

 _THUNKTHUNKTHUNK!_

Marcus jumped as the HEMTT was raked with fire once more, and he automatically raised his rifle to return fire, but Dresden immediately knocked it away. Startled, Marcus glanced at him, only to see Dresden had pulled out some sort of monocular optic from somewhere, and was pointing it in the direction Orlović had indicated.

"That's not the Covenant," he immediately declared but before Marcus could ask, Dresden grabbed the radio.

"Voodoo 6-1 to all Voodoo 6 victors: cease fire. I say again, cease firing!" he barked. "Orlović! Cease fire!"

"BUT WE ENGAGED!"

"Hold your fire!" Dresden insisted. "All units: cease firing! That's not the Covenant, that's blue on blue fire! I say again: we're shooting at ourselves!"

Marcus head snapped up at that, even as their guns slowly petered off. Yet, despite that, the incoming fire continued to rain down on them. Of course, now that Dresden had mentioned it, all the incoming rounds sounded distinctly like bullets, and not plasma fire.

"SARGE, IF THAT'S BLUE ON BLUE, HOW COME THEY STILL SHOOTING AT US!" Orlović demanded to know, even as bullets continued to skip off the roof of the HEMTT.

"That's 'cause they don't realize it yet!" Dresden yelled back. "Billy, get down so you don't get hit! Marcus: shut the door."

Marcus hurriedly slammed the door shut even as Dresden lifted the radio once more.

"Voodoo 6 to Voodoo 2. Interrogative, what is your POS, over?" he said in a loud but clear voice.

" _6, this is 2! We got the Covenant pinned down, but we need backup, now! Break! Voodoo 2 Actual to all Voodoo 2 victors: maintain suppressing fire! We got reinforcements inbound!"_

"2, 6: belay that order! Say your POS!"

" _Say my what?"_

A taping noise filled the air and Marcus looked back to see Dresden irritably tapping the receiver against his temple.

"2, what is your freaking position, over," Dresden replied with obvious strained patience.

" _I'm on Highway 270 at milestone twenty-five!"_

"No, no you're not. Check your grid again, but you're not even on the right highway. Voodoo 2, you're on Highway 495, and you're shooting at _US,_ over."

There was a long pause as Voodoo 2 seemed to consider what Dresden was saying. Then, without warning, all the incoming fire abruptly stopped.

" _Uh, Command, this is Voodoo 2."_

Voodoo 2's commander came back onto the radio, only this time, he sounded rather sheepish.

" _Uh, earlier reports of Covenant contact on Highway 270 were in error. Covenant contact was made on Highway_ _ **495**_ _at milestone_ _ **one twenty-five.**_ _I say again, Highway 495 and milestone one two five, over."_

Dresden let out a loud sigh as he lowered the radio.

"Goddamn Colonial Militia," Marcus heard him muttering.

"Are you for real, man?" Orlović let out a groan. "Are you telling me I just burned through three hundred rounds of ammo because fucking 2 didn't even know where the fuck he was? Who the fuck is in charge of that unit?"

"2nd Lieutenant Buttigieg," Dresden distractedly replied as he fiddled around with the radio.

"Who the fuck is that, and where the fuck did that dumbass get his commission?"

"New guy. Was just assigned to the unit last week. As to your other question…" Dresden looked up and Marcus could see he was grinning. "Heard he got his commission through ROTC. At Caedmon University."

There was a notable moment of hesitation from both Marcus and Orlović, as not only was that the university Marcus had been looking to get into before enlisting in the military, it was also the university where Orlović's grandfather was one of the deans.

Marcus couldn't help but glance in Orlović's direction to see how he was reacting, only to see a rather embarrassed look on his face.

"Can't believe a goddamn Bulldog would do us wrong like that," Marcus heard Orlović muttering.

"You guys alright? Did either of you get hit?" Dresden was asking in the meantime.

"Nah, man, we good," Orlović immediately replied and Marcus nodded.

"Okay. Hang tight while I check with the rest of the convoy."

Dresden turned back to the radio and started talking, but Marcus was no longer paying attention as he was still trying to figure out what the heck had just happened. Two friendly units were shooting at each other because somehow, one of them was on the wrong highway? Then how did they see each other? Plus, how were the Covenant involved? Were they involved? And finally and most importantly: how was it Dresden was alive?

Marcus looked up as Dresden lowered the radio.

"Alright, well, from the sounds of it, aside from 6-2 getting disabled by that mine, no one else was injured." Dresden paused. "Honestly, I'm not sure what's worse: the fact that two CM units were shooting at each other for ten minutes and no one realized, or the fact that two CM units were shooting at each other for ten minutes and no one _hit_ anything."

For some reason, Marcus felt his cheeks begin to heat up at that.

"Sorry," he mumbled.

"Not your fault, Marcus," Dresden assured him. "These things happen. In the fog of war, people are really jumpy so all it takes is for one person to start shooting. Then everybody joins in and it becomes almost impossible to control."

"At any case," he continued, "they gotta shove 6-2 out of the way, but once they do, we'll be on the move again."

"Good," Orlović grumbled. "I don't like sitting here in the middle of the road like this; feel like a sitting duck. Also: what the hell happened to you? Thought I heard Olsen say you were dead, but…"

He gestured at the very clearly living and breathing Dresden.

"Yeah… about that…" Dresden said lightly, but nevertheless Marcus couldn't help but flinch. "This isn't a knock on you Marcus, but when we get a chance, let's all of us have a quick lesson on how to tell when someone is _dead,_ versus simply _knocked out._ "

Dresden grinned at Marcus, but regardless, Marcus felt his cheeks burning once more.

Dresden cleared his throat.

"Anyways," he said as he rubbed the back of his neck. "Covies are probably still out there, so Orlović: get back on your gun."

Orlović nodded, and promptly disappeared back onto the turret. In the meantime, Marcus turned to face Dresden.

"Hey Sarge?"

"What's on your mind, Marcus?" Dresden said as he fiddled with the radio.

"Can I ask: what…" Marcus paused as he considered how he was going to word his question.

"What happened?" he finally said. Dresden glanced up.

"You mean with the firefight?" Marcus nodded. "Okay, well, its hard to see because it's so dark, but beyond those trees," Dresden pointed out to the left where, just off the highway, there was a small cluster of pine trees, "there's a small forest, maybe hundred, two hundred meters wide, known as the Waldo Provincial Park. Just beyond that though, Highway 495 runs roughly diagonally to Highway 270; they intersect about another fifteen klicks down the road. That's where Voodoo 2 was."

"So, all these vehicles," Dresden continued, "come equipped with IFF tags that are constantly broadcasting. There's a setting in your goggles that will cause the IFF tags to show up on your HUD as Waypoints, but not everyone realizes that; sometimes people turn it on without realizing. When you're nervous or scared, everything starts to look like muzzle flashes. Voodoo 2 probably saw us passing through the area, thought we were the Covenant and opened up. We started taking fire, so we shot back. And then it just sort of spiraled out of control from there."

Marcus took a moment to absorb all that. It was crazy to him, how a simple miscommunication like that could have resulted in a large amount of people getting killed. The good news was, by the sounds of it…

"So… does this mean there weren't any Covenant in the area?" Marcus hopefully asked, but Dresden shook his head.

"No, there was definitely Covenant. That was most definitely a plasma mine that disabled 6-2, and of course…" he gestured at the hole in his helmet.

"Thanks goodness for personal protective armor, huh?" he joked. "At any case, what I'm guessing happened was that the Covies weren't entirely sure which highway we were going to use, so they set an ambush on both. It just so happened that we wereusing _both_. So, Voodoo 2 got hit, then us, and Covies started attacking all of us cause, you know, that's what they do. But the moment we started shooting at each other, Covies probably bugged out, figuring we'd do their job for them. But, ha! Joke's on them: we're so good, we weren't even able to inflict a single casualty!"

Dresden sort of laughed, but Marcus just shivered.

"So… does that mean the Covenant are still out there?" he anxiously asked.

Dresden shrugged.

"Probably," he allowed. "But it doesn't really matter: Command is sending down a company of armored vehicles to deal with them. In fact, that's probably them right now."

Marcus looked up in time to see three armored vehicles come rolling down the highway in the opposite direction. Even as Marcus watched, they turned off the road and started to head straight for the forest.

"Go get 'em guys!" Dresden urged.

Marcus just shivered.

 **XXXXX**

 **Newington, Thracia Province, Actium  
May 7, 2545  
0443**

 **Tariq**

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!"

Ducking his head and covering his ears, Tariq waited until the sappers detonated a series of shaped charges, blowing holes into the frozen ground. As the dust settled, Tariq leaned his shovel against his shoulder and tapped his radio.

"Alright, kid," he said, "pull her forward!"

Tariq glanced in the direction where Lillian was sitting idly nearby. Corona was at his station, though Tariq could see his head poking out from the open hatch.

With a loud rumble, Lillian lurched forward, and Tariq watched as the metal edged of the mine plow Lillian had been temporarily fitted with half an hour ago cut into the newly disturbed dirt and begin shoving it away. It wasn't easy; for whatever reason, command wasn't able to get any bulldozers out here, so Tariq and his company were forced to improvise, hence the mine plows. However, mine plows were no substitute for actual bulldozers, and this situation was proving no different. Even with Lillian's immense bulk behind him, Tariq could see Corona struggling to fight his way through the entire patch they were trying to excavate.

A loud grinding noise filled the air as Lillian's tracks slipped and slid along the frozen ground, and Tariq could only hope Corona was smart enough to not try _too_ hard: last thing Tariq needed was for Corona to burn out Lillian's engine before the day had even really begun.

Finally, after several minutes of struggling, Corona was eventually able to make his way through the patch, shoving aside the top third meter of dirt, and forming the rough outline of the hull-down position they were trying to build.

Tariq mutely let out a sigh of relief. Now that they had made it past the frost line, it should be easier from here on out. He tapped his radio.

"Alright, back it up and do that again another two or three times to get the depth we need," Tariq commanded. He could see Corona nodding before he threw the tank into reverse and backed up.

As Corona went about doing his work, Tariq took the moment to take a break from the sandbags he was filling. Removing his helmet, he reached up to wipe at his brow. Despite the cold, with all the physical labor he'd been doing, Tariq had found himself building up quite the sweat.

He hurriedly threw his helmet back on when he heard the sound of someone making their way through the snow towards him, but as Tariq turned around to see who it was, he found himself relaxing when he realized it was only his friend Chenko.

"Someone want to explain the math on this one to me?" Chenko immediately began bitching before Tariq could even so much as lift his hand in greeting. "So, in about an hour's time, we're about to launch the biggest offensive in the entire history of this colony, against the worst enemy humanity has ever faced, right? But rather than doing stuff like, I dunno, getting more ammo or preparing, we're standing around… digging a defensive position?"

Chenko gave Tariq a look of pure incredulity. "Like, what the fuck?"

Tariq rolled his eyes and threw his hands into the air. "Dude, you've been in the Army for almost as long as I have; you know how this shit works. Some officer who thinks he's smarter than he actually is, thinks we enlisted can't be trusted to watch out for ourselves for longer than thirty seconds, so they give us a bunch of bitchwork to try and keep us occupied. It's all the same shit."

"I know," Chenko groaned. "But still; I thought all this bitchwork was for the junior enlisted. Figured things would change once I hit E-5. Guess I was wrong."

"No shit," Tariq snorted as he removed the used up wad of tobacco from his mouth and tossed it aside. Looking around, he decided he was far enough behind the frontlines that it would be safe for him to light up a cigarette. Pulling out a pack, he offered one to Chenko, who gratefully took it.

"Guess we need to make at least E-6 before we can get out of shitty work details like this one," Tariq continued after exhaling, sending a cloud of smoke into the air. "Or maybe even as far as E-8; kinda like First Sergeant Noble."

Chenko let out a small, bitter, laugh.

"Yeah. She _always_ disappears when there's bitchwork to be done," he complained, before looking around. "Where is she anyways?"

"How the fuck should I know? Doing first sergeant shit I guess, I don't know. It's not like she's leashed to me."

Chenko snorted appreciatively and Tariq took the opportunity to pick up his shovel and start digging again. Fucking sandbags. Chenko was right: why the fuck were they digging in when the entire front was about to go on the offensive, Tariq had no idea. Still, he supposed it was better than getting shot at.

Chenko abruptly let out a loud cough, and Tariq looked up to see him still standing there, looking pensive. He rolled his eyes.

"Dude, if you're not fucking doing anything, go grab a pickaxe and help me with this shit, will ya?"

"Fuck you," Chenko immediately replied, though without any real malice. "I got my own shit to deal with."

"If that were even remotely true, then what the hell are you doing bothering me for, motherfucker?" Tariq retorted.

"I came here to bum a cigarette! If I knew you were going to hassle the shit out of me, I wouldn't have fucking bothered!"

"Well, fuck you then!"

"Well, fuck you too!"

The two soldiers glared at each other, daring one another to make a move. Much to his own disappointment, Tariq was the first one to break and crack a smile.

"Goddamn sandbags," was all he said as he drove his shovel into the ground once more and grabbed a scope-full of dirt.

"No shit," Chenko replied as he reached down to hold the bag open.

For the next few moments, the two of them worked in silence, with Chenko holding onto the bags while Tariq filled them.

Realizing his cigarette had burnt out, Tariq paused to flick the butt away, but as he did, he happened to spot Chenko staring at him with an intense look on his face.

"What."

Chenko jumped.

"Nothing," he quickly said. "I was just… hey, I've been meaning to ask: how's she working out? Noble, that is. I mean, as First Sergeant? She _is_ an outsider."

Tariq shrugged.

"Tactically, she's not worth a damn," he said as he picked up his shovel and began to dig once more. "But we always knew that was going to be a thing with her. At least she's pretty on point with the administrative stuff 'cause I don't know shit in regards to that."

"Guess she's no Mahathir," Chenko noted.

"Well... to be fair, you only ever get one Mahathir in a brigade: a First Sergeant who actually knows his shit and isn't a complete asshole. That's why it sucked so much when he was killed," Tariq said.

"It's probably just as well," Chenko mused. "Man was pretty damn empathetic. Guess that's what made him so good. Still, I don't even want to _imagine_ how he would have reacted to what we did - "

Tariq involuntarily twitched, accidently dumping his shovel load of mud onto Chenko's boots instead of the bag. Chenko glanced at his boots, and then at Tariq.

"Dude... you alright?"

" _I'm_ fine," Tariq insisted, "but what the _fuck_ is wrong with you? That's like… you've been bring up that shit a lot in the last few days. Thought we agreed we weren't going to talk about it anymore?"

"Sorry," Chenko softly replied. "Just... hard to put it out of my mind, with everything that's going on right now... plus, you hear Duvall got hit?"

Tariq sighed and put down his shovel.

"I did," he admitted, thinking back to the casualty list he'd been looking at earlier this morning. Their former tank commander, Sergeant Dwayne Duvall, had been listed as wounded in action as of yesterday afternoon. "List didn't say how it happened though."

"Well, both his driver and gunner are listed as KIA," Chenko pointed out. "My guess? His tank got taken out somehow. Point is, with Duvall down, that leaves… what? Us? Lavina? And Shayan? I know Lavina got transferred over to 1st Brigade, but whatever happened to Shayan?"

Tariq sneered.

"If you can figure that out, I think Command's got a cash reward for that information," he pointed out. "Shayan's been AWOL since we rotated back to the world. Pretty sure he deserted."

Chenko shook his head. "Knowing him, he probably drunk himself to death, which is probably why no one can find him. Fuck him, I guess. He was the one that wanted to, more than any of us, to – First Sergeant Noble!"

Tariq jumped and glanced over his shoulder. Hurriedly walking towards them was Noble.

"Sergeant Helmand. Sergeant Chenko," Noble greeted. "Glad both of you are here."

"First Sergeant," Tariq replied with a slight incline of his head. "What's going on, Top?"

"We've got a mission," Noble replied before turning to Chenko. "Sergeant Chenko, go get your 'Dillo crew and Dragoon 2-4 and bring them over to my tank. Leave the tools; someone else will grab them."

Tariq and Chenko exchanged a look then Tariq shrugged.

"Sergeant Helmand: with me," Noble commanded as she walked over to the tank.

Jerking his head in Chenko's direction, Tariq dropped his shovel and ran after Noble.

"So... what's our mission First Sergeant?"

"You remember those Skirmishers we engaged yesterday that was harassing our supply line?" Noble asked. "We had to pull out a damaged HEMTT from a blast crater?"

Tariq took a moment to think.

"Oh, right," he finally said. "That CM logistical unit. The one with that really squirrely driver. What'd they call him? Marcus?"

"Something like that," Noble said dismissively as they walked up to the tank. Tariq could see Corona craning his head to look at them curiously, and Tariq gestured for him to join them. "At any case, I'm talking about those Skirmishers that ambushed the convoy."

"Yeah, I remember them," Tariq replied. "What about them?"

"Apparently we didn't get them all," Noble said simply. "They were quiet for the rest of the day yesterday, which is why we didn't think anything of them, but I guess they've decided to come back into the war. They just hit a convoy a couple minutes ago. Command wants our rear secure before we attack, so… we've been tapped to go in and take them out. For good this time."

They both looked up as Chenko and the rest of his men joined them. Noble lifted a hand in greeting before continuing.

"According to surveillance," she said as she activated a map of the general area, "Skirmishers have probably taken shelter here, inside the Waldo Provincial Park."

"Good place for them," Chenko commented. "It's a pine forest so the trees still have their leaves, even in the winter. Plenty of places for them to take cover in."

Noble nodded. "Exactly. Our plan is simple: we go in, flush them out, and then kill them."

"We have any idea of the numbers we'll be facing?" Tariq asked.

"Roughly twenty Skirmishers of various ranks. Suspect heavy weapons, but no vehicle or fire support."

Tariq silently snorted. That was so typical of the Covenant. Only twenty guys with no vehicles, but rather than do the smart thing which was to set up some observation posts and keep quiet, the Covenant naturally insisted on attacking everything in sight. Given their lack of discipline and poor tactical ability on all levels, from the lowest soldier to the highest general, there were some days Tariq wondered how humanity was even losing this fight.

Of course, the fact the Covenant rarely committed to a surface invasion like this one probably didn't help. It was going to be a very bad day if the Covenant ever found a general who was actually _good_ at land warfare.

"Despite these small numbers," Noble was saying, "the assaulting force will be fairly robust: it will consist of Cataphract 07, Dragoon 2-2 and 2-4 approaching from the west, with elements of Hippeis approaching from the south. Our plan is basically to herd the Covenant into one general area in the woods so none of them can escape, and then kill them all. Any questions?"

Chenko raised his hand. "How's our tactical advance going to look like?"

"We'll advance through the woods in a rough line," Noble replied. "Dragoon 2-2 will be on the left flank, 2-4 on the right, with Cataphract 07 in the center. Infantry squads will be deployed by fireteam between the vehicles."

Tariq noticed Noble's eyes flickering in his direction, as if seeking his approval, and Tariq gave a sort of half-shrug. It was as good of a plan as any.

"Cataphract will advance the main road as we've got the mine plow, Dragoon will advance parallel down these foot paths. Our goal is to herd the Covenant into this clearing here, but honestly, any spot will really do, just as long as we don't allow any of these bastards to slip past us. We'll advance with a fifteen meter spacing between each vehicle, five meter spacing between each rifleman. Radio check every five minutes, as soon as we hit the woods, we'll probably lose visual contact with each other. Any questions?"

Tariq shook his head. Everything was pretty straight forward.

"Then let's move it out."

The meeting broke apart as everyone headed back to their respective vehicles.

Tariq hefted his SMG, which reminded him he needed to eventually go get more ammo for, and climbed aboard Lillian. Hopping inside, he settled down at his station and immediately felt a sense of exhaustion settle over him. It was getting tiring, not just today but in general, getting back time after time into this tank. Tariq wasn't sure how many more years he'd be able to keep this up.

Tariq couldn't help but snort in amusement at his own gripping. He was only twenty-three; yet, he was already sounding like he was in his forties or fifties. Fighting a war sucked major balls. He wondered how Noble was managing to hold on.

"Gunner, load up one gun with canister, the other with HEAT," Noble commanded as she settled into her own seat. "We shouldn't encounter anything heavier than light infantry, but let's not take any chances."

Tariq silently nodded in agreement as he set his weapons.

"Driver, move us out!"

Lillian lurched forward and began plowing right through the snow in the direction of the park. As they drove, Tariq could feel himself falling back into the routine, though the ride was a lot less smooth than it usually was.

"Kid, what the hell is wrong with you?" Tariq demanded to know after he drove Lillian over a particularly large bump. "You're acting like you hadn't been driving this damn vehicle all day yesterday."

"Sorry," Corona distractedly replied. "Just not used to driving the tank with the mine plow attached."

"How the fuck does that affect you!?" Tariq demanded to know. "Plows aren't that heavy, at least not compared to the rest of the vehicle. There's no way it could be effecting the balance of this tank. Fucking idiot."

Tariq could hear Noble let out a sigh from behind him.

"Sergeant, what the hell is your damn problem with Private Corona?" Noble snapped before Corona could reply.

"It's alright, First Sergeant," Corona started to say, but he was quickly cut off.

"No Private, it's not okay," she retorted. "Under the circumstances, you're doing fine. Sergeant Helmand needs to just lay off with the hostility. Unless he's got a personal reason to dislike you...?"

"No, First Sergeant," Tariq reluctantly replied.

"Then lay off him. I understand there's always some good natural ribbing between veterans and replacements, but now you're taking it too far. Unless you got something constructive to say, shut up, Sergeant. That's an order."

"Yes, First Sergeant," Tariq quietly replied.

"Good. Driver, halt. Cataphract 07 to Dragoons 2-2 and 2-4: begin deploying infantry, over."

With a start, Tariq glanced out of his periscopes. Without him realizing, they had somehow already arrived at their destination.

"I'm going up top," Noble reported and Tariq shivered as she popped open the hatch, allowing the freezing air to once again permeate the vehicle, and climbed out, leaving Tariq and Corona to wait for the infantry to sort themselves out.

Tariq could hear Corona clearing his throat.

"Um... just so you know... I didn't ask her to say any of that," Corona apologetically began, but Tariq wasn't interested at the moment.

"Private, shut the fuck up and pay attention to your damn job," Tariq snapped. He could see Corona lifting his hands off his controls in a placating gesturing.

"Okay," he gently replied. "That's fine, we're cool."

Tariq had to bite his tongue to avoid retorting. Instead, he glanced outside to see what the infantry were doing. He could see Chenko gesturing wildly at his men to get into position before reaching up and -

 _"Cataphract 07, we're all set, over,"_ Tariq heard him say over the radio.

 _"Copy that. Platoon: advance!"_

 _"Roger. Alright, 2nd Squad! Watch your spacing and move it out!"_

Tariq watched as Chenko and his men plunged into the snow covered trees. He waited for a few moments, with his hand hovering near the trigger. Between the snow, the morning darkness, and the infantry's camouflaged uniforms which also helped mask their heat signature, it didn't take long for Tariq to completely lose sight of the infantry across all spectrums. Fortunately, their IFF beacons were still broadcasting, so Tariq was able to track their movements via motion tracker, but it still made him sit up straighter in his chair as he monitored their progress.

 _"This is 2-2 Alpha,"_ Chenko said after a few moments. _"Radio check."_

 _"Cataphract 07: we read you loud and clear," Noble replied._

 _"Copy. We're making our way through the woods. Undergrowth is a bit thick,"_ he added, and Tariq could hear him grunting, _"But we're making good progress. No sign of enemy infantry just yet, over."_

 _"Understood, 2-2. Keep alert. There's no way they didn't hear us coming, over."_

 _"Wilco. Hey! Contreras! Keep your eyes up, brother! Skirmishers can climb trees, don't you know?"_

There was a mute _click_ as Chenko switched his radio off, before he was replaced by Noble.

 _"Alright, crunchies are in,"_ Noble reported over the general channel. _"2-2 and 2-4, advance. Driver, let's push forward, but keep a safe distance between us and the infantry."_

Tariq immediately looked up at that. Putting a hand over his mic just in case it somehow turned on, he leaned as far back in his seat as he could and gave Noble's pant leg a good tug to get her attention.

"Hang on First Sergeant," he quietly said as soon as she ducked back into the tank. "We're going into the woods?"

The look she gave him clearly showed she thought he was messing with her.

"Yeah, Sergeant," she slowly began. "That's what we're here for: to drive these Skirmisher out of here and into the open."

"No, I got that First Sergeant, but _we_ ," Tariq gestured at the vehicle around them, "don't need to go into the woods. We got good positioning here: a nice concealed position, good sight lines, and a strong radio connection with our infantry support. We can literally just sit here and lob shells into the woods and all we'll need is for Sergeant Chenko to tell us how to adjust. We go into those woods, we lose all that."

"We went into the city earlier," Noble pointed out, but Tariq shook his head.

"Different situation entirely. We were trying to capture the town. The buildings would have blocked our shots, unlike here. Plus, at the very least, there were plenty of avenues of approach we could have taken. Here, we would be confined to one road. We go into those woods, we'd be asking to get ambushed."

Noble looked hesitant at that. For a long moment, she didn't say anything as she seemed to be considering everything Tariq had just told her.

"Uh... First Sergeant? What we are doing? Am I continuing to advance or what...?"

Both Noble and Tariq glanced in Corona's direction. Evidently, in lack of new orders, Corona had proceeded to follow his original ones and had started to drive forward, reaching the very edge of the woods before hesitating. At that, Noble seemed to come to a decision.

"All vehicles, halt," she commanded. "Hold position on the edge of tree line. 2-2 Alpha, we're standing by to provide fire support."

 _"Copy,"_ Chenko immediately replied, however he sounded distracted. _"07, be advised, we have eyes on what might be a Skirmisher fighting position."_

A navpoint appeared on Tariq's HUD.

 _"We spotted possible Covenant movement disappearing behind some bushes maybe ten meters behind that navpoint,"_ Chenko continued. _"Requesting you fire one round, HEAT, flush them out, over."_

"Copy that," Noble smoothly replied. "One round, HEAT. Standby."

She glanced at Tariq, who was busy adjusting his turret.

"Gun up!" Tariq announced as soon as he was satisfied he was on target.

"Send it."

"On the way!" Tariq bellowed. But just as he pulled the trigger -

 _"Hang on, Sergeant,"_ one of Chenko's men suddenly yelled over the radio. _"That damn Skirmisher just fizzled out of existence, like it was a damn hologram!"_

 _"What!?"_

At that moment, Tariq's shell exploded, causing him to miss hearing what Chenko said next. However, he didn't miss it when Chenko started screaming, _"Contact, CONTACT!"_

The crackling of machine gun fire began echoing through the woods, and Tariq glanced through his scopes. He could see the holographic markers indicating where Chenko and men were located, further in the woods, but he had no idea what they were shooting at. Glancing at his motion tracker, he was surprised to see red dots moving all over the place, including right beside his tank suggesting they were surrounded, but that didn't make much sense as there were definitely no hostiles around him.

Reaching out, Tariq gave his motion tracker a good smack, just to see what would happened, but the dots still remained. It took him a few moments to realize what was going on.

"They got a radar jammer!" Tariq exclaimed.

At the same time, Noble was saying, "2-2 Alpha, this is 07: give me a sitrep, over!"

 _"07, I got hostiles!"_ Chenko immediately yelled back. _"Think we found the Skirmishers! Don't know where the hell they came from but - Bensen! Put a grenade right there, RIGHT THERE! No! Look at where I'm pointing at dumbass! Holy shit, these guys are fast. 07, be advised, these aren't your run of the mill Skirmishers, we got Champions and Murmillos inside the forest!"_

"Shhhhit," Tariq hissed under his breath. Champions and Murmillos were some of the best troops Skirmishers could hope to become. They were like what Zealots were to the Elite: the best of the best of their species.

 _"We're taking heavy fire from this area!"_ Chenko continued, and another navpoint appeared on Tariq's HUD. _"Request you just start saturating that area with as much HE as you possibly can, over!"_

"Copy that, fire support is on the way!" Noble yelled back. "Gunner, open fire! 2-2 and 2-4, shift your autocannons in that direction and open fire!"

Tariq panned his turret to the side and opened fire on the spot Chenko had indicated. In the meantime, he listened as Chenko and the rest of the riflemen attempted to coordinate their actions as the firefight continued to unfold.

 _"Hey, spread out y'all!"_ Chenko was yelling at his men. _"Don't fucking bunch up! Contreras, watch your fucking spacing, you goddamn cyka!"_

 _"Sniper! Get that little monkey up in that damn tree!"_

 _"Which fucking tree!? We're surrounded by fucking trees!"_

 _"Just... fucking shoot at all the ones in front of us!"_

 _"Well, that doesn't tell me shit!"_

 _"Keep your - oh shit, INCOMING!"_

 _"What the - hey! That was one of our fucking shells! Shoot at the bad guys, not us you fucking assholes!"_

 _"Hey! Dragoon 2-2 or 2-4! One of you guys need to shift fire!"_ Chenko bellowed. _"Your forty mils are hitting way too close to us!"_

"Copy! Dragoons, cease fire!" Noble immediately ordered. "2-2 Alpha, we're attempting to figure out who needs adjustment. Standby to spot the fall of these rounds, over."

 _"Roger!"_

 _"2-2, fire!"_

As he waited for his cannons to reload, Tariq glanced to his left in 2-2 direction as the IFV fired a three round burst, ejecting shells casings straight up into the air as they did.

 _"Those rounds are on target!"_ Chenko yelled. _"2-4, adjust your fire! Go up another... uh, fifteen meters!"_

 _"Copy, will adjust,"_ came the reply from 2-4's vehicle commander.

 _"2-2 Alpha to all vehicles: maintain suppressing fire on the target! Hey! 2-2 Bravo! Corporal Ivan! If me and 2-4 Alpha lay down some covering fire, you think you can take your fireteam and do a flanking run to the right!?"_

 _"I tried doing that about five seconds ago!"_ Ivan yelled back. _"But I've run right into a pillbox and I'm pinned down! 07, I need some fire support at this location! Target is some makeshift pillbox made out of logs, over!"_

"Dragoons, maintain suppressing fire on initial target Alpha," Noble barked and Tariq stole a glance in Dragoon 2-4's direction on the left to see all sorts of brass casings piling up on the ground beside the IFV's tracks as the Armadillo continued to fire its main cannon into the woods. "Gunner, shift fire right onto target Bravo!"

"Shifting!" Tariq yelled as he adjusted his aim and fired again.

 _"07! Target is about ten, fifteen meters to the right of where you're hitting!"_ Ivan reported. _"Need you to adjust, over!"_

Tariq hastily panned his turret to the right a bit and fired again.

 _"Now you've gone too far!"_ Ivan immediately yelled. _"Push left... maybe five meters to the left!"_

"Copy!"

Tariq adjusted his aim once more, shifting his turret to the left just a hair before promptly opening up with everything he had. At the same time, he could hear the RWS going off, and he realized Noble was also firing their heavy machine gun in support, spraying the area down with indirect machine gun fire.

 _"That's it, right there 07, break! Svenson, get the SRAAW and hit that fucking thing while it's suppressed! The rest of you, as soon as that bunker goes up, peel left!"_

 _"Bensen, watch your fucking back, don't let these fuckers get close 'cause they_ **will** _fucking snap you in half! Dragoon 2-2, shift fire left about six meters, over!"_

 _"MAN DOWN! This is 2-4 Alpha, I got a man down! MEDIC!"_

 _"Who got hit? And how bad is it?"_

 _"It's Specialist Stieringer! He took a couple needlers to the lower gut, blew his stomach wide open! So it's bad! Very bad! We need to get him out of here, now!"_

 _"Copy!"_ Chenko yelled back. _"07, we need one of the 'Dillos to move up to 2-4 Alpha's position and medevac a critically wounded man, over!"_

"Copy that 2-2, standby!"

Tariq heard Noble clicking off her mic, and he could almost feel her staring at the back of his head.

"We send an IFV in, we risk losing it," Tariq noted. "But if we don't, that WIA becomes a KIA. Either way, it's a shitty situation, but it's your call First Sergeant!"

He glanced over his shoulder to see Noble biting the inside of her lip.

"Dragoon 2-4, move in and evacuate the wounded," she finally ordered. "07 to 2-2 Alpha: Dragoon 2-4 is inbound to evacuate the wounded. Establish a casualty collection point and standby to lead 2-4 right to it!"

 _"Copy that 07! Alright guys, you heard the lady, move it!"_

"2-2 Bravo, give me an update on your status, over!" Noble called into the radio.

 _"This is Bravo!"_ came the near instant reply. _"Target has been destroyed, lift fire! Break! 2-2 Alpha, we're attempting our flanking run now! See if we can't take some of that pressure off you, over!"_

 _"2-2 Bravo, say again? You're only attempting your run now?"_

 _"That's an affirm!"_

 _"I thought you started five minutes ago! Why the hell else did we start taking less fire - fuck! Skirmishers have peeled away! All units, be advised, enemy has broken contact - 2nd Squad and 4th Squads do not have eyes on enemy contacts any longer, I say again, we do not have enemy Skirmishers pinned down anymore!"_

"Oh, fuck!" Tariq swore as he realized what that meant. If Chenko and his men no longer had eyes on the Skirmishers, then that meant the Skirmishers could be anywhere in these woods -

\- including attempting to make a flanking attack on the unsupported armored vehicles sitting on the edge of the tree line.

Tariq grabbed his sights and swiveled them around in time to see several Skirmishers dropping out of the tree tops and landing right on top of Dragoon 2-2's Armadillo. The group consisted of four Murmillos and at least one Champion, all of whom began banging on the hatches that would lead inside the Armadillo.

 _"This is Dragoon 2-2: help! I got infantry swarming all over my vehicle!"_ came the frantic cry from the Armadillo crew.

"2-2: hang on!" Noble yelled. "Driver, back us up away from this tree line just in case the Skirmishers try to jump us next. Gunner! Spray down 2-2's vehicle!"

"Man, I hope you guys are really buttoned up," Tariq muttered under his breath as he turned his turret in 2-2's direction and opened fire with his coax.

Sparks began flying in all directions as Tariq simply hosed the entire IFV down with machine gun fire. He saw one Murmillo get hit several times in the legs and upper torso with gunfire, sending the creature sprawling to the ground. The remaining four Skirmishers, however, quickly took cover behind 2-2's turret which Tariq couldn't penetrate with his machine gun fire, even if he wanted to.

"Goddamn, these fuckers are hard to hit," Tariq hissed as the Skirmishers returned fire, hitting Lillian with a bunch of blind fired plasma. "First Sergeant! 2-2 has got to turn their turret! I can't hit the Skirmishers otherwise!"

"2-2, turn your turret!" Noble barked and outside, Tariq could see 2-2 hurriedly rotating their turret.

Unsurprisingly, the Skirmishers began moving with the turret, trying to avoid getting knocked out of cover by 2-2's barrel. It wasn't perfect, and for a brief moment, one of the Murmillo's accidently stepped out from behind cover. Tariq didn't hesitate, and blasted away at the alien. He could see one round striking the Skirmisher right in the shoulder, blowing the alien's left arm off and knocking the creature off the top of the IFV and onto the ground. But the wounded Skirmisher wasn't able to accomplish much because immediately 2-2 began spinning their entire Armadillo around in a circle, shifting large amounts of snow around and throwing it right on top of the Skirmisher, essentially burying the alien alive.

At the same time, Tariq was doing his best to hit the last three Skirmishers, but without warning, 2-2's turret stopped rotating.

"What the hell 2-2!?" Tariq yelled.

"2-2, keep rotating your turret: you still have three Skirmishers sitting on top!" Noble yelled.

 _"We know! But we can't turn our turret any longer! We think the Skirmishers have somehow jammed it in place!"_

"Fuck!"

Now secure behind cover, the Skirmishers continued to rain plasma down on Lillian, and there was very little Tariq could do about it from inside the tank. While the plasma was hardly strong enough to penetrate Lillian's armor, there was always the chance they could hit something vital and plus, with the Skirmishers drawing their attention, there was no way Lillian could support the infantrymen still fighting in the woods. There had to be some way for Tariq to deal with the Skirmishers, but how?

As he studied the IFV, Tariq suddenly realized two of the Skirmishers were standing extremely close to one of the Armadillo's reactive armor panels. Why Dragoon 2-2 even had reactive armor panels mounted was a bit of a mystery to Tariq as reactive armor had proven to be all but ineffective against Covenant based plasma weaponry, but it suddenly occurred to Tariq that was something he could use now.

"First Sergeant, I think I figured out a way to get those Skirmishers off Dragoon," Tariq yelled. "But I'm going to have to fire a HEAT round at them."

 _"What!?"_

"If I can trigger some of their reactive armor, the explosion might just be enough to at least knock the Skirmishers off and into the open!" Tariq told her. "Because, otherwise, I don't know what else to do!"

Noble glanced at him and let out a sigh.

"I hope you know what you're doing," was all she said before lifting her mic, "2-2 Actual, get out of your turret and into the vehicle itself. We're going to try something, and it's going to involve us shooting a HEAT round right at you. Get down in case it actually penetrates."

 _"Understood! Whatever it is, just make it fast! Our hatch locks aren't going to last much longer!"_

"Gunner?" Noble demanded.

"Hang on!" Tariq distractedly yelled back as he took careful aim. His goal was to avoid hitting Dragoon head on with his shell, just in case it penetrated, but at the same time, he had to hit the reactive panel with enough force to actually trigger the explosive brick inside. "I think I got it!"

"Fire!"

"On the way!"

Tariq pulled the trigger.

 _ **BANG!**_

One of Dragoon's reactive panels exploded! The Skirmishers had moved by the time Tariq had fired, so only one of the aliens actually got hit by the blast, but Tariq was delighted to see it was the Champion that was blown to the ground.

"Troop in the open!" Noble yelled as the Champion struggled to his feet and Tariq hurriedly turned his turret and aimed directly at the creature.

"Engaging!" Tariq roared as he fired his coax. He could also see tracers coming from the top of the tank and he realized Noble was also engaging with the RWS.

Tariq's first burst smashed into the Skirmisher's legs just as the creature was standing up. The machine gun bullet ripped through the alien's flesh and shattered its bones, sending the Skirmisher crashing onto the ground once more. As the Champion laid there, screaming in pain and hatred, Noble blow its head off with a single .50cal bullet, and Tariq couldn't help but laugh out loud.

"Ha!"

"Incoming!"

Tariq's head jerked up in time to see the overcharged plasma pistol shot flying right towards them. The overcharged hit Lillian's turret dead on and immediately the entire tank shut down.

"EMP! Private, reset the system!"

"Too late!" Tariq yelled as through his backup sights, he could see the remaining Skirmishers hope off Dragoon and began charging straight towards the tank. "Enemy in the open! No power - I don't got a shot!"

"Small arms! Small arms! Driver, engage!" Noble immediately bellowed. She grabbed her SMG and popped open her hatch. Almost immediately, Tariq could hear an M7 going off and glancing outside, he could see one of the Skirmishers lifting his point defense gauntlets strapped to his forearm and deflecting the first burst.

"Private, I don't have a hatch of my own! Get out there and help out!" Tariq snapped.

"I'm on it!" Corona yelped as he grabbed his own SMG and unlatching his hatch.

As Tariq frantically did his best to reset the entire tank from his station, he glanced outside. Noble was still frantically shooting at one of the Skirmishers, but the Skirmisher was somehow able to block just about everyone one of her shots. Then -

 _PATATATATATA!_

Corona opened up, firing an extended burst right at the same one Noble was shooting. Taken by surprise and unable to block gunfire come from two different angles, the Murmillo took several shots to the leg and toppled to the ground. Tariq could see the alien gripping its legs and screeching in pain, before Noble finished it off with a quick four round burst to the upper chest.

"Reloading!" Noble screamed as she ducked back and ejected her empty magazine and tossing it aside. "Sergeant, I need a new magazine!"

Swearing, Tariq lurched forward and grabbed a couple sitting inside a pouch mounted on the wall next to his station.

"First Sergeant! Here!" he yelled, tossing her the magazines.

Meanwhile, Corona had shifted his fire towards the remaining Skirmisher but before he could fire, the Skirmisher pulled out its plasma pistol and managed to fire first. The alien sprayed the entire tank down with wild plasma fire, forcing Corona to duck, and as the Skirmisher got closer, Tariq could see the alien pulling out a plasma grenade with its free hand and priming it. Just as the Skirmisher drew back its arm to throw the grenade –

 _ **BOOM CLANK!**_

\- a 40mm shell slammed right into the Skirmisher's back, causing the alien to practically burst open like a ripe watermelon that had been dropped from the top of a ten story building, leaving a vaguely Skirmisher shaped smear of blood on the ground. The shell continued it journey, ricocheting off the ground and into the side of Lillian's side skirt armor, where it failed to do much more than scratch the paint.

Tariq glanced to up to see that while the Skirmishers had been distracted, Dragoon had taken the opportunity to spin around on the spot until their cannon had been pointed directly at the remaining Skirmisher so they could engage.

"Thanks for the assist, 2-2," Noble said over the radio as soon as Corona reset the system.

 _"Consider it payback,"_ 2-2 replied.

"Fair enough," Noble allowed before switching topics. "2-2 Alpha, 07: we have five confirmed Skirmishers down in our area. What is your status?"

 _"We're still engaged!"_ came Chenko's reply. _"But I think we're achieving fire superiority! Might want to give Hippeis a head's up; I think they've got incoming!"_

Tariq glanced at his sensors. Someone must have disabled or destroyed the radar jammer as everything had cleared up, and Tariq could now very clearly see three or four red dots in the center of his screen while blue dots representing Chenko and his squad were closing in from below. Simultaneously, at the top of his screen on the edge of his sensor limits, he could see more blue dots emerging: Hippeis and their infantry support closing in from above. It wouldn't be long before the remaining Skirmishers were surrounded and wiped out to the last.

"Copy that, Alpha," Noble replied. "Break. Cataphract to Hippeis. Do you read, over?"

 _"This is Hippeis, go ahead."_

"Hippeis, be advised, you've got incoming foot mobiles to your position. How copy, over?"

 _"Copy that, we're picking them on our sensors and... yep, incoming already came. We're engaging, over."_

Over the radio, Tariq could hear the sound of machine gun fire and as he watched, one of the red dots abruptly disappeared from his screen.

 _"Scratch one Champion!"_ Hippeis crowed. _"Cataphract, have your infantry support cease pursuit and assume defensive positions; we'll take it over from here."_

"Copy. Cataphract, out. 07 to 2-4, what's your status, over?"

 _"We've extracted the wounded and are pulling out of the woods now,"_ 2-4 reported and Tariq glanced up to see an Armadillo backing out from the tree line. There were scorch marks all over the vehicle's armor, indicating 2-4 had taken some fire, but for the most part, the IFV seemed intact. _"Some of these guys are hurt pretty bad; they need immediate medical attention! Requesting permission to return to base?"_

"Granted. Get out of here."

Noble waited until 2-4 started pulling away before continuing. "2-2, how badly fucked up is your turret, over?"

 _"Weapons are operational, as you saw, but we can't aim them unless we turn our entire vehicle,"_ 2-2 replied. _"Not sure what those Skirmishers did; we're probably going to need the mechanics to check it out."_

"Understood. Sounds like things are wrapping up for now, so hopefully we won't need your weapons. Hold position for now so the crunchies can have a ride and once we return to base, we'll have the mechanics check your vehicle out."

 _"Acknowledged. 2-2, out."_

The radio feel silent and Tariq sat back in his seat. He watched as the dots on his screen go from two, to one, and then finally all signs indicated all hostiles had been eliminated. Infantry would take another fifteen to thirty minutes sweeping the rest of the woods, just to make sure, but for now, Tariq was satisfied this little skirmish of theirs was over.

Now they could focus on killing all the other Covenant on the planet.

* * *

 **Author's Note**

\- The second half of this chapter, the one involving Tariq, was actually a chapter I had intended to use for Book 1, but ultimately decided to cut. I figured I could repurpose it for this book to show that, while the Covenant have ended most of their major offensives and the UNSC has yet to begin theirs, there's still a bunch of minor skirmishes going on as both sides attempt to leverage themselves into a better position before the real attack begins.


	41. Chapter 40

I was trying a "thing" with this chapter. Try not to think about how long some of these conversations would actually be in real life.

* * *

 **Chapter 40**

" **Northern Front" HQ, Byzas, Actium  
May 7, 2545  
0500**

 **Lieutenant General Athena Miles**

Taking a sip from the cup of steaming tea Pasang had just placed on the table in front of her, Athena glanced at her watch: they were at T minus sixty minutes to H-hour. Right on schedule. Good.

For the last two hours, Athena and her staff had been frantically working, trying to make sure all the elements required for this upcoming operation were in place. The force they had assembled was hardly textbook, however it was the best they could hope to achieve given their somewhat limited resources. Unfortunately, for an operation this complex, there was only so much Athena could do to prepare, as a large amount of factors were simply outside of her control. Being the responsibility of other people, the best Athena could do was hope and pray they would pull through.

Of course, Athena wasn't much one for "faith," which is why rather than waste her time praying, she was here, attending another briefing.

Unlike the briefing she had attended earlier this morning, this one was far more limited in scope, being confined to only include the commanders in charge of the ground component of Operation: SUDDEN PURGE II. With that being said, key figures in the chain of command, such as Admiral Spaatz, General Langley, and the commander of the Army's INSCOM, Lieutenant Colonel Harper, were still in attendance.

"Good morning," General Fields was saying, his hologram flickering ever so slightly. As commander of the overall ground battle, he was leading the briefing. "The purpose of this briefing is to ensure all elements – Air Force, Army, Navy, and the Marines – of this operation, are all communicating on the same frequency so that we may be able to conduct this upcoming offensive in the most effective and efficient manner."

"A quick summary of the plan as it stands at the moment: with the bulk of the Covenant forces located in the southern half of the city of Byzas, the main thrust of our attack will come from the north. Under the purview of Lieutenant General Athena Miles and her 9th Marine Expeditionary Force," Fields reported, throwing a nod of acknowledgement in Athena's direction, "UNSC forces will drive the Covenant out of the city proper and up against a defensive line, as established by Lieutenant General Mabel Valerien and her XIV Armored Corps."

"The geography of the Thracia Province greatly limits the axis of the Covenant's advance," Fields continued, "but it doesn't stop them entirely. Therefore, to prevent the enemy from attempting to outflank either of our two major fronts, we have two other forces in position to hold them back. In the west, the Actium Army's 24th Mountain Division under the command of Brigadier General Tai Wahta has begun entrenching themselves in the heart of the Haemus Mountains."

Athena glanced around the room and spotted the man in question, giving a small wave.

"Meanwhile, out in the east, along the shore," Fields was saying, "we have a task force from the Actium Navy's North Euxine Fleet. While the likelihood of a Covenant amphibious assault is slim to none, it's not out of the question. Therefore, Rear Admiral Jale Darvish's ships are standing ready."

Athena glanced across the room where a younger woman was sitting, wearing a simple navy service uniform.

"Finally, the skies. Both the Navy's Sixth Fleet and 52nd TAF are slated to provide us orbital cover, however tactical air support in the form of Broadsword fighters and Shortsword bombers will be provided by the UNSCAF's No 112 Air Division, under the command of Lieutenant General Gordon Shreve."

"In terms of our timeline," Fields continued. "We intend to begin our attack at exactly zero six hundred hours – H-Hour - with an artillery barrage, utilizing both heavy howitzers and short-ranged MLRS's from the Army and the Marine Corps. Targets will include known Covenant hardpoints, as well observed troop concentrations still in the open, however, the main target of the barrage is all known and probable locations of Covenant AA, with the goal of destroying, disabling, or suppressing all enemy air defenses located in the city."

"Barrage will continue, unabated, for thirty minutes, at which point all Covenant air defenses will hopefully be sufficiently suppressed. Whereupon, Shortsword bombers from the No 112 AirDiv will conduct a flyover of the entire city and bomb every single known, probable, and suspected Covenant position using a combination of bunker busters, cluster munitions, and thermobaric weapons. As soon as the Shortswords are finished, Broadswords and Wombats will follow up with ATGM strikes on any targets the bombers may have missed."

"Bombing run and air strikes will take… approximately fifteen minutes to complete barring any complications?" Fields stated, glancing at Shreve, who nodded in confirmation. "Upon which, ground artillery will resume engagement of all previously established targets inside the city. Initial barrage will consisted solely of long and short-ranged rocket artillery; once all rockets have been expended, tube artillery will immediately take over, and will continue to maintain suppression of enemy defenses throughout the entire course of the operation."

"In the meantime, at about zero six forty-five hours, all ground combat units will begin their advance. In the north, Marines supported by Army troopers will begin advancing south through the city. On the southern front, Army tanks supported by mechanize infantry will simultaneously assault in the east and west directions out from the town of Newington in order to expand our defensive line. Attack aircraft, gunships, rotary craft, and mortars will be on standby to provide fire support on both fronts."

"Unfortunately, given our general lack of confirmed intelligence regarding the Covenant composition, we're not sure how much resistance we can expect from them. However, given their tendencies, we can only assume the Covenant will fight back with the same rabid fanaticism we've see from them in the past. Therefore, it's a little hard to predict just how long ground operations will continue. Ideally, the Covenant defense will simply collapse in the face of our infantry's advance, however more realistically, NORTHCOM is expecting the fighting to last the entire day, at least," Fields affirmed. "However, we're prepared to do whatever it takes to sustain the combat; our goal is the complete elimination of all Covenant soldiers on this planet, whatever it may take."

"Are there any questions?"

Athena heard someone clear their throat, and she looked up to see Admiral Spaatz leaning forward.

"Question, General," he began. "How many Covenant AA sites have we been able to positively identify? I know our supply of bombers is somewhat limited, so I'd rather not risk them unnecessarily."

Fields let out a small cough.

"Pardon sir, but I do believe that's a question General Shreve is more qualified to answer," he replied, before glancing in Shreve's direction. "General?"

Shreve slowly climbed to his feet.

"To be completely honest, sir? Not much, if any," he admitted. "We've spent most of the morning having Wombats do slow and low overflights of the entire city, see if we can't draw some ground fire but… the damn Hinge-heads aren't taking the bait. I reckon they've figured out what we're doing, and are doing their best to hide, for now. They'll probably emerge the moment our birds go in."

"So… what are we doing to protect our aircraft?" Spaatz asked.

"Well, sir, we've got a couple of things goin' our way here," Shreve replied. "Covies didn't have much time to set up proper SAMs, so their AA is limited to two things: Wraiths and Shades. Wraiths are a bit more of the problem, as they're mobile, and have a lot more armor compared to Shades. But like Shades, they have a relatively short detection radius, which limits where they can go. Which is why, the initial artillery barrage will be focusing heavily on those few spots we can expect the Wraiths to be."

Langley looked up.

"How much artillery is being dedicated towards that task?" he asked.

Shreve glanced at Fields.

"Roughly seventy percent of the initial barrage, sir," Fields replied. Athena could see Langley raising an eyebrow.

"That much? We're not worried about counter-battery fire?"

"Well sir, all signs indicate the Covenant are doing their best to preserve their heavy weapons for the infantry attack, so we don't expect much counter-fire," Fields explained. "But in the event that does happen, NORTHCOM HQ has assigned General Valerian a battery of tactical ballistic missiles for, well, counter _counter-_ battery fire. Furthermore, Admiral Darvish has allocated at least one guided-missile destroyer equipped with hypersonic cruise missiles for our use."

"Not only that, sir," Athena interjected, "as part of the 9th MEF's assets, we have a battery of 'Delta' model Rhinos, equipped with Zeus 320mm plasma cannons, which we're retaining for this purpose."

"If we've got plasma weaponry in play on the field, then let's make sure all commands are aware of that," Spaatz immediately said. "Last thing we need is for someone to accidently call down counter-fire on our own guns."

"Yes, sir," Langley said, as Athena nodded in agreement. That was a good point. "Though that does raise the question: how are we planning to spot the enemy fire?"

"Aircraft, mostly," Shreve explained. "I'm planning on having at least three Longsword airborne warning and control system craft over the city at any given time. Key will be trying to find the best altitude to park them – too high, and we run the risk of taking fire from orbit, but too low and they might as well be bait for Covenant AA fire. But, we'll figure it out, sir."

"Having AWACs over the city will also give us the advantage of being able to spot any Banshees that might try to come out of the city and engage our bombers," he added, "so there's that."

"Good, good," Athena heard Spaatz saying."Let's switch topics here for a moment. General Fields, you mentioned NORTHCOM is prepared to sustain combat for at least a full day. Are you prepared for the possibility that fighting could extend beyond that time?"

Fields grimaced.

"Yes and no, sir," he admitted. "For the last half day, the priority of the Transportation Corps has mostly been on munitions – at the moment, we've managed to amass roughly five thousand shells a piece for each of our howitzers and mortars, ballpark figure of about ten thousand rounds per infantryman, and almost three quarter million litres worth of fuel. However, our shortfalls are with medical supplies, food, and water. In that order, sir."

"What's the problem?"

"Frankly, sir, our logistics are tapped out. Our focus has been moving combat units into position, at the cost of logistical and supply ones. As a result, we just don't have enough trucks or men. And the situation is only going to get worse once off-world reinforcements arrive and simple battlefield attrition."

Athena could see Spaatz glancing between Fields and Langley. "So, what are we doing to address this issue?"

"Well, as you know sir," Fields began, "the Army has always been rather dependent on the Colonial Militia for rear echelon support. So I've given the order to activate just about every single support unit under my command and have them shipped here. However, they _are_ CM units, which means they aren't prepared to deploy this quickly; essentially sir, it's going to take them time to marshal their forces and deploy to this area."

"How much time."

Fields noticeably hesitated. "A couple of days, sir. At earliest."

Spaatz frowned. "So, again I ask: what are we doing to address this shortfall?"

Langley shuffled in his seat, drawing the attention of everyone in the room to him.

"I've reached out to the other unified combatant commands of this colony for support," he reported, "most notably Southern Command and Central Command as they're both the closest. They've been ordered to ship over their activate support units over to Hellas as soon as they can, but again, it will take a few days for them to arrive."

"In the meantime, sir," Fields quickly added as Spaatz started to become visibly annoyed, "we're starting to commandeer trucks from civilian stock."

"Self-driving trucks or manned vehicles?"

"Both, sir."

"How are you getting the drivers?"

"Started by asking for volunteers," Langley explained. "As well as offering cash incentives."

"And how many takers?"

Athena noticed Langley and Fields exchanging a look.

"Not as many as we would need," Fields admitted.

Spaatz reached up and visibly pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Any chance the Marines could lend a hand?" he suddenly asked, jutting his chin in Athena's direction.

"Not really, sir," Athena admitted. "As I told General Fields when he asked, 'We Marines are known for a lot of things. Logistical is not one of them.' As you know, sir, Marines are rather dependent on the Navy for most of our support."

Spaatz nodded and fell silent for a moment.

"Offer up drivers priority refugee resettlement status for their families if they're willing to stay, not just in the next couple of days, but for the entire battle," he finally declared. "But if that doesn't take, start conscripting drivers."

"Sir. Unfortunately sir, there is also still the issue of providing them with protection," Fields pointed out. "Ideally we should keep the Covenant boxed in around the Byzas area, however… we can't guarantee it."

"Tap into the civilian police force, and offer them the same deal," Spaatz commanded. "At least until reinforcements arrive. Speaking of which, what's the status in that regards?"

"Might be easier, sir, if the front commanders explain their situation themselves," Fields offered, before turning to Valerien. "Why don't we start with the south? General Valerien?"

Valerien climbed to her feet.

"My situation is as follows, sir: currently I've got roughly three quarters of the 7th CAV online and ready for combat. I've got one maneuver brigade from the CM's 80th Rifle Division in my AO, however, given that they are a light infantry unit only, they are of somehow limited utility. However, I'll still be able to find a use for them. Most importantly sir, I've just got word that the entire UNSC Army's 31st Armored Division just arrived in the system about half an hour ago, so I'll be working with my staff on getting them and their tanks transported to the surface while operations are underway."

With a small nod, Valerien started to sit back down but before she could, Langley raised his hand.

"General Valerien, quick question: as I understand it, the only combat aviation brigade you had at the ready was the 53rd CAB, only they're up north, under General Miles' command. Who are you using for air support instead?"

"The Actium Air Force, sir. Mostly Vulture gunships and SkyHawk attack aircraft from the No 234 Attack Group," Valerien reported.

Langley nodded, and Valerien sat down. Then, almost as one, everyone turned to look at Athena.

Clearing her throat, Athena stood up.

"As I explained in this morning's system-wide briefing, my largest issue is with command and control," she began. "Since that time, my staff and I have managed to hash out a workable system. It's not pretty, but we're confident it should hold until the rest of my forces land. Speaking of which, we've also managed to work out a timetable for when the rest of the 9th MEF is able to land; at the moment, we're bringing down the 77th Marine Regiment, with the 43rd to follow. However, the problem I'm rapidly running into is a general lack of infrastructure; until we begin our attack, I simply don't have much room to station too many Marines."

"And I am getting a lot of Marines," she continued. "Aside from the 103rd MEU, I've also got two more Marine combat units en route to the system: the 11th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, as well as the 8th Marine Division."

Out of the corner of her eye, Athena noticed General Wahta looking up.

"Ma'am, any chance you could send a couple battalions my direction?" he asked.

Athena took a moment to think it over.

"Probably," she finally announced. "How many do you need?"

Before Wahta could reply, Fields raised his hand.

"What's the problem, General?" he asked. "I thought you had most of the mountain passes secured already?"

"I do. But, in order to do so, I had to deploy _all_ my troops," Wahta explained. "Keep in mind sir, I've only got two units under my command at the moment: the 33rd Mountain Brigade Combat Team and the 2nd and 7th Battalions of the 1187th Mountain Infantry Regiment. I have absolutely no reserves, so if the Covenant were to attack in force…"

Wahta trailed off and gave a shrug. Athena glanced at Fields, who nodded.

"I'll have my staff put together an RCT centered around the 38th Marine Regiment," she declared. "And I'll probably be able to give you the 103rd MEU once they arrive. However, I'm not sure I can spare much more than that; based on all the intel and recon I'm receiving, this offensive is shaping up to be one hell of a meat grinder, so I'm going to need all the Marines I can get to maintain my momentum."

"That's plenty, ma'am," Wahta assured her. "Though… I don't suppose you've got some air support to spare too?"

Athena shook her head. "As of right now, all our air support will be coming from the Army Airborne's combat brigade, who barely have enough aircraft to cover our entire AO. I have more aircraft coming online, but not for several more hours, at least."

"I can have a couple of my fighter squadrons transferred over to your AO," Shreve suddenly offered. "They'll be fast movers, not gunships, but at least it'll be better than nothing."

"That'll work. Thank you sir," Wahta assured him.

"General Langley, contact High Command and have them ship over another mountain unit and a couple more aircraft squadrons," Spaatz ordered. "Preferably multi-role fighters jets; I have a feeling we might need them."

"Yes, sir."

Spaatz glanced around the room. "I do believe that's everything. If no one has any more questions…"

Athena glanced up as someone suddenly raised their hand. It was Rear Admiral Darvish.

"Excuse me Admiral," she said in a soft voice, and Athena couldn't help be struck by how young she sounded, even for a one star admiral. "I can't help but note that there seems to be a lot of effort going into this operation. But our goal is to kill all the Covenant, right? If you don't mind me saying, sir, but at this point, wouldn't it just be easier to nuke the city of Byzas and be done with it, and avoid all this bloodshed?"

Athena glanced at Spaatz, curious to hear his response, only to see him immediately shaking his head.

"As much as I'd like to do that, there are several factors that prevent us from trying just that," he began. "First off, both the Sixth Fleet and ODC have asked me to conserve all nuclear weapons, no matter the yield, for usage against the enemy fleet in orbit as, despite our superiority in numbers, the balance in firepower is roughly equal. Nuclear weapons are quite possibly the only thing that might be able to shift that balance in our favor."

"I've already approved the request because, secondly: we don't actually have too many nuclear weapons deployed on this planet. As you're undoubtedly aware, Admiral, Actium manufactures quite a few munitions, however nukes are not one of them. With most of our ready stock already off-world, our supply is limited."

"Lastly, according to information I've received, with the amount of iron ore located within the crust of this planet, detonation of even a low yield tactical nuke on the surface would result in mass contamination of the atmosphere with iron dust and rust particles. While exposure to both substances in low concentrations is relatively benign, the amount that would be deposited… well, I'm not a doctor, so the science is beyond me, however I'm told it would permanently contaminate the atmosphere and toxify the water supply, effectively destroying this world."

Darvish nodded in understanding, and then sat back down, however Spaatz's response left Athena slightly disappointed. While her Marines were equipped and trained to deal with any situation, she would have rather avoid this upcoming battle if at all possible – she simply wasn't interested in losing too many of her men in the meat grinder that Byzas was undoubtedly going to become.

Nevertheless, despite her misgivings, Athena had a job to do, and so she would execute to the best of her abilities.

Athena was roused from her thoughts when Spaatz stood up once more.

"Thank you all for attending," he acknowledged. "If that's everything, then the only thing I have left to say is good luck. Dismissed."

"Sir," Athena called out in farewell along with the rest of the occupants of the room, before reaching out and deactivating her projector. Once more, she suddenly found herself back inside the communications room of her headquarters building, and it took her a few seconds to reorientate herself. Once she did though, she immediately walked outside where Pasang was waiting patiently for her.

"Ma'am," Pasang said, snapping to attention as soon as Athena stepped out. Athena barely acknowledged her presence and instead, jumped right into business.

"What's the status of the 77th MAR RGT?" she demanded to know as she headed in the direction of the CIC.

"1st Battalion has fully transited to the surface, though they're still awaiting their heavy weaponry," Pasang announced as she followed in Athena's footsteps. "Meanwhile, we've begun shipping down 3rd Battalion."

"Good," Athena replied as she stepped into the CIC, waving her hand to stop everyone from immediately snapping to attention, before gesturing for General Lysander, Colonel Savage, and Sergeant Major Osterman to join her. "Keep at it. In the meantime though, new orders from FLEETCOM: Colonel Savage, I want you to get a line up to 9MEF HQ and tell them to prep an RCT centered around the 38th Marine Regiment. At the same time, inform Colonel Riley to prep his boys for mountain warfare – they're getting shipped over to the western front to shore up the UNSC defensive line in the Haemus Mountains."

"Not sure we have enough transports to do that, as well as continue to bring the 77th down to the surface," Pasang immediately warned, causing Athena to frown.

"Then get in contact with General Shreve's staff at the 112th," she ordered. "See if they wouldn't mind lending us some of their heavy-lift aircraft to help out."

"Yes, ma'am."

"While Colonel Savage is doing that, Colonel Pasang? Continue working on bringing the rest of the 9MEF elements to the surface. General Lysander?" Athena turned to the man in question, who snapped to attention. "As most of our logistical support right now is coming from Army units, I want you on point in that regard. Interface with all the G-4 and S-4 sections, and double check we have enough supplies to sustain this fight in the event it last longer than a fully thirty-six hour day. If not, inform me immediately. Apparently, NORTHCOM as a whole is finding themselves running short in terms transportation units, so I have a feeling we're going to end up fighting with the other fronts over who gets what. If we can building up a stockpile of essential supplies right now, then I rather do that."

"I can do that, ma'am," Lysander replied, and Athena immediately turned to the last man in the room.

"Finally, Sergeant Major Osterman: I want to do a last minute inspection of at least the artillery units participating in the initial barrage. Let's ensure the men are equipped and ready to engage, understood?"

"Ma'am."

"Alright." Athena clapped her hands. "You're all dismissed. Let's go people!"

Her staff promptly scattered, leaving Athena alone for the moment to calm herself down. She frantically thought about what else she needed to do to prepare, but found herself coming up short. At this point, she had done everything she could. The only thing left was for her to hope that the men and women who would be doing the actual fighting was ready.

Without thinking, she checked her watch:

They were at T minus twenty minutes to H-Hour.

 **XXXXX**

 **O'Neill Air Force Base, Actium  
May 7, 2545  
0542**

 **Zelda**

Zelda stared pensively out across the airfield in the direction of north. Obviously he was too far behind in friendly territory to be able to see anything, but reports had been coming over the radio all morning about the minor fighting that was taking place closer towards the frontlines – it would seem that while the fighting had slowed, it hadn't entirely stopped.

None of the fights had warranted the attention of the Air Force though, being too small to really justify the need to scramble fighter jets. Plus, about half of the skirmishers were over before any call for help could be sent out. Which was good, as that had allowed the ground crews to conduct a full overhaul of Zelda's Broadsword, making sure it was ready for another long day of fighting. However, in a few minutes that would all change, which was what led to Zelda's current dilemma.

It wasn't that he was scared to go back into the air. Zelda was no pussy: flying wasn't just a job for him, it was a way of life. It was what defined him. Being able to kill a bunch of monstrous, genocidal aliens while doing so was just icing on the top. However, there was no denying that doing so took a toll, both physical and emotional, on the pilot flying the machine. Flying at those speeds, for that many hours, sitting on the edge of the seat, knowing that death could come from anywhere… it was rough. A lot of people couldn't hack it.

Of course, Zelda _was_ one of the best of the best… but still, even the best pilots in history had gone down because of the smallest of incidents. The Red Baron, for example. Killed by a single bullet fired from the ground as opposed to ordnance launched by any flying machine. And while those things certainly happened from time to time, it was just not the way Zelda wanted to go out.

Zelda looked up as Odessa unexpectedly plopped down onto the ground right next to him.

"Happy birthday," he announced without preamble as he handed Zelda a package.

Without thinking, Zelda took the package before pausing. "My birthday's not until next month."

Odessa shrugged.

"Well, consider it an early gift," he retorted.

Zelda glanced at him before shrugging to himself and tearing off the cardboard paper that covered the package. To his mild surprise, the package turned out to be a six-pack of energy drinks.

"Know you're not much of a coffee drinker, so figured you would rather prefer that over this," Odessa noted, gesturing at the large thermos of steaming coffee he was carrying.

"Where the fuck you get this shit?" Zelda asked even as he removed one of the drinks from its packaging. Popping open the can, he took a quick swig.

"BX," Odessa simply said.

Zelda's head snapped up at that.

"The BX?" he repeated. "When the fuck were you allowed to go to the BX, and why wasn't I told?"

Odessa frowned. "We got permission to go, like, an hour ago because Bellum figured our Broadswords wouldn't be ready to go in that time, so it didn't hurt for us to leave and get some small comfort stuff. Where the fuck were you?"

Zelda opened his mouth to reply, but then hesitated. He'd actually been sitting here in that time.

Out of the corner of his eye, Zelda could see Odessa giving him a close look.

"Dude, you alright?" he finally asked.

Zelda grunted.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he replied. "Why?"

He could hear Odessa shrugging. "We've known each other for over two years, and during that time, I can almost never get you to shut up. Now you're hardly speaking. Plus, Skeeter mentioned you were having issues getting up this morning."

Choosing to ignore the first part, Zelda instead glared at him.

"Really? You're gonna believe a word Skeeter says?" he sneered.

Odessa gave an indifferent shrug.

"Hey, Skeeter might have a stick up his ass, but he's generally honest about these sort of things," he allowed, before narrowing his eyes. "Which is something _you_ would have known if you bothered to hang out with the rest of the squadron every now and then."

Zelda stared at him.

"Why the hell would I want to hang out with those… casuals, when I already spend more time than I want with them here?" he couldn't help but exclaim.

Odessa shook his head.

"You know, it's one thing to be 'Mister Anti-Social' all the time, but it probably wouldn't hurt to have another friend in the squadron besides me and… well…me," he pointed out.

"What makes you think you're even my friend?" Zelda reflexively retorted and immediately winced. He didn't really mean that.

Fortunately, Odessa didn't seem to care.

"'Cause I'm the only one around here who can tolerate your bullshit," he dryly noted. Then he added: "Plus, I'm a better pilot than you."

Zelda scoffed and shook his head. "Whatever man."

Odessa smirked and took a large gulp from his thermos. His watch suddenly let out a loud chirp, and he quickly glanced at it before letting out a loud sigh.

"Well," he began. "Guess it's time. Let's go kick some ass, yeah?"

Zelda grunted in agreement and climbed to his feet before following Odessa as he led them in the direction of their respective hangars where their Broadswords were located. As they did, the sound of multiple fighter jet fusion engines starting up began to fill the air.

Zelda glanced at his own clock.

They were at T minus eighteen minutes to H-Hour.

 **XXXXX**

 **Byzas, Thracia Province  
May 7, 2545  
0545**

 **Adel**

 _Click-clack. Click-clack. Click-clack._

Adel sat inside the lobby of the one of the many buildings the Marines had taken over and integrated into their defensive line, idly playing with one of his magazines while staring out of the nearest window in the direction he knew where the Covenant MRL to be.

At the moment, he and the entire UNSC force was waiting. Waiting for the artillery to begin firing. Waiting for the order to be given for them to advance. Waiting for them to attack. Adel had to admit, in some ways, he was kind of looking forward to it. Not because he was all that interested in getting shot at, but mostly because he was getting sick and tired of simply waiting here. Sitting in this freezing weather, getting lost in the thoughts he simply didn't want to be thinking about. Adel had joined the Marines for the action, and right now, that was exactly what he needed.

At the same time, he wasn't exactly looking forward to this attack. He could still remember with absolute clarity the sheer amount of defenses the Covenant had set up in front of the Marines from his recon mission with Lancelot last night, and that had been hours ago. Who knew how much more the Covenant had accomplished since then?

Not that Adel was concerned about getting hit. Rather, he simply didn't want to see his friends get torn up right in front of him. Not again. Because, as much shit as Sam and even X gave him, they were still his friends, and he didn't want them to get hurt because otherwise… well, he didn't know what he would do.

"Is that why your magazine feed lips are always fucked up?"

Adel looked up at the sound of Sam's voice, only to see him staring pointedly at the magazine Adel was playing with. Adel glanced down, where he had been absentmindedly popping the first round out of his magazine, only to immediately put it back in.

"No…" Adel reflexively denied, even as he replaced the round and resisted the urge to immediately remove it once more.

Sam snorted in disbelief.

"Don't do that dude," he warned. "Government issued magazines are shitty enough as it is; no need to make them worse by doing what you're doing now."

Adel couldn't help roll his eyes, but he nevertheless tucked the magazine back into its proper place on his belt. Unfortunately, he found he couldn't sit still for very long, and he quickly pulled out a fragmentation grenade and began to play with that instead. Sam raised an eyebrow at the sight, but didn't say anything. Instead, he merely snorted in amusement before returning to his Rubik's cube.

Sighing to himself, Adel quietly placed the grenade back onto his belt, only to hear the sound of someone approaching him. He looked up to see two Marines walking towards him, but unlike Adel and his buddies, Adel could tell these guys weren't _UNSC_ Marines, but reservist as everything about them – from the way they walked to the way they carried their rifles – screamed colonial militia.

"Excuse me," one of them said as the two of them came to a stop right in front of Adel. "You Corporal Yilmaz?"

Adel gave them a critical once-over.

"Who's asking?" he demanded to know. The speaker gestured at himself.

"I'm Lance Corporal Stephen Gale, and this here is Private First Class Derik Reznick," the man said, introducing himself and his friend. "Lieutenant Lancelot told us to come here. Said we were being reassigned to your team. To act as ammo bearers?"

Adel stared at them, aghast.

"Son of a bitch, you got to be fucking kidding me!" he spat out. "I knew the LT told us he couldn't give us any of his good soldiers, but I didn't think he was going to give us fucking _reservist!"_

The other soldier, Private Reznick, immediately bristled.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he demanded, ignoring the warning look Gale seemed to give him. "We're Marines, just like you – just because we're also Colonial Militia, it doesn't make us any less trained than you are! And besides, your battalion commander, Major Garcia, is also from the CM! So, what's your problem?"

"Adel, shut your mouth and don't answer that question," Sam interjected before Adel could say a word. Climbing to his feet, he took a step forward and physically put himself between Adel and the two militiamen. " _I'm_ Corporal Yilmaz. So you two are our new ammo bitches, huh?"

"Ammo _bearers_ ," one of them, Gale, immediately correct.

"Ammo bearers, ammo bitches, what's the different?" Adel heard Sam reply with a verbal shrug. "Point is, you're here to help us carry ammo. That's good, cause need lots of it. Let's get you fitted real quick. Either of you trained on the M41 Jackhammer before?"

The three of them walked away, leaving Adel both confused and horrified. He immediately turned to X.

"'Our battalion commander, Major Garcia?''" he quoted. "Who the fuck is Major Garcia, and what the fuck happened to Lieutenant Colonel Van Klinken?

X looked up from the data pad on philosophy he was reading from and gave Adel an odd look.

"Okay, genuine question here: do you treat briefings as naptime or something?" he asked.

"No, why?"

"'Cause all this shit was explained when we got our mission objectives, dude. For this operation, due to 'command and control reasons,' we've been temporarily reorganized; we're no longer with 2/77th MAR REGT, we're something like 'Item Company, 3rd Battalion,' which is apparently just a conglomeration of us, the Army dudes, a couple of AF guys, and the militia." X leaned in towards Adel. "You really oughta start paying more attention, dude, 'cause otherwise, it just might cost you your life."

With that, X turned back to his data pad, leaving Adel to be suddenly very reluctant to embark on this offensive. It was bad enough he and his buddies were about to march into the shithole that was this city; it was another thing entirely to do so with fucking _reservist_ watching his back.

He quickly glanced at his watch to see if there was enough time for them to get some other people as ammo bearers. Unfortunately, they were at T minus fifteen minutes to H-Hour.

Fuck, this was going to suck.

 **XXXXX**

 **Staging Area, Thracia Province  
May 7, 2545  
0548**

 **Tariq**

Tariq quietly tore the top off his small packet of powdered milked and poured it into a bottle of water he had stashed in one of the various nooks at his station nearby. Thoroughly shaking the entire combination in order to ensure it was properly mixed, he then went ahead and poured his drink into the bag of breakfast cereal that had come with his MRE. With his free hand, he reached into one of his vest's pockets and pulled out his spoon. Blowing on it a couple of times to make sure it was relatively clean, Tariq leaned back in his chair as much as he could, before proceeding to dig in.

Tariq could honestly say that breakfast cereal was one of his most favorite foods in the entire universe. It was rather weird though, as it wasn't any cereal in particular, it was all of them. Duvall used to suggest that it was actually the milk that Tariq enjoyed, but Tariq was pretty sure that wasn't right – the few times Tariq had drunk milk by itself, he had found the stuff to be rather nasty. No, there was something in particular about the combination of breakfast cereal and milk that Tariq really enjoyed.

Thinking about his old tank commander caused to Tariq to let out a mental sigh. So. Duvall had been hit. It was… almost impossible to believe, really. Back on Draco III, Duvall had gotten a reputation for doing a lot of crazy stuff that under normal circumstances, should have either killed him or gotten him seriously wounded. Yet somehow, Duvall had been one of the few soldiers to make it through that campaign completely unscathed. And yet, he couldn't even last a full day on Actium.

Now, to be fair, Tariq had no idea how _badly_ Duvall was wounded. The most frustrating thing about casualty lists was that it was just that, a list. It never went into any details about what happened, when, or how bad the injured party was. Obviously, in order to make it onto the list, the injury had to be bad enough to remove the soldier from action, but for all Tariq knew, it was something as simple as a sprain ankle or some crap like that.

But somehow, deep down, Tariq knew it had to be pretty serious. After all, it wasn't in Duvall's nature to simply give up and allow himself to get evacuation. Not without serious protest at least.

Tariq let out another mental sigh. He supposed the easiest solution was to simply call the man, but ignoring the fact that, given the circumstances, personal calls like that weren't being allowed, Tariq simply had no way of actually reaching Duvall. He had tried calling Duvall a couple times in the months following their evacuation from Draco III, but it quickly became clear to him that Duvall was openly ignoring him. Obviously he wasn't interested in forgiving Tariq for his role in… whatever happened on Draco III, and in some ways, Tariq couldn't blame him.

At the same time, what they had done had been done for the greater good, and if Duvall couldn't accept that, then fuck him. Being a soldier was all about making the difficult choices, and if Duvall couldn't handle that, then perhaps he shouldn't have been a soldier in the first place.

Yet, on the other hand, Tariq was sort of sad to see the years of friendship they had together just… get dumped down the drain like that…

Suddenly realizing his eyes were getting a bit misty, Tariq violently shook his head and looked around his station for something to distract him. Realizing he wasn't feeling any heat, Tariq glanced at the nearby vent, only to find it wasn't blowing anymore. Mutely letting out a growl, Tariq reached out and gave the thing a solid whack.

 _Bang._

"Jesus!" Corona let out a loud yelp as he physically jumped in his seat. Tariq gave him a very strange look.

"The _fuck_ is the matter with you kid?" Tariq demanded to know through a mouthful of cereal.

"Sorry! I was just… um… I was… sorry," he stammered. "I'm just, uh, a little nervous about this upcoming operation."

"Why?"

Tariq could see Corona physically turning around in his seat to give him an incredulous look.

"Because… it's the Covenant," he said, a bit uncertainly. "There's a lot at stake here: a lot of lives are going to be lost in the next few hours, but at the same time, if we don't succeed here, that's going to send repercussion rippling across the entire planet and – "

Tariq immediately held up his hand.

"Why are you worrying about that shit?" he demanded to know as soon as Corona had stopped talking.

"I don't follow," Corona admitted.

"Why are you worrying about other people's lives and the 'strategic repercussions' of this operation?" Tariq elaborated. "That's not your job. You're not a general. Or an admiral. Hell, you're not even an officer. You're just a tank driver. Why worry about shit that's not under your control?"

"I just – "

"No, shut up and listen to me," Tariq immediately interrupted. "Your job is to drive this tank, and do whatever she tells you." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder in Noble's direction. "Just like how my job is to shoot this gun. That's all _you_ need to worry about. Focus on your job, focus on doing it right, and trust that everyone else in the AO is doing the exact same thing. Because if we all play our roles to the best of our ability, then we'll be fine. Don't spend your time worrying about shit that's not under your control, focus on the things you _can_ , and you'll be much better off that way. Hooah?"

"Hooah," Corona replied after a moment of silence. He didn't sound entirely convinced, but when he turned back to his station, he was visibly calmer, so Tariq chalked it up as a win.

Behind him, Tariq could practically hear Noble beaming at their interaction, and Tariq was pretty sure she thought it was the result of her lecture from earlier this morning, but truth be told, Tariq's actions was merely pragmatism. After all, being stuck in the same tank as Corona, if Corona were to somehow freeze or freak out in the middle of a fight and the tank were to be struck, then there was a good chance Tariq would be taken out too.

No, if Tariq was not going to get killed by something stupid like that.

Taking another bite out of his cereal, Tariq glanced at his clock to figure out how time he had to enjoy what would probably be his last meal today.

They were at T minus nine minutes to H-Hour.

 **XXXXX**

 **Outskirts of Newington, Thracia Province  
May 7, 2545  
0551**

 **Marcus**

 _Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap._

A steady tapping noise filled the cabin as Marcus nervously bounced his foot up and down on the floor.

"Stop doing that," Orlović demanded from where he was sitting beside Marcus. Marcus immediately stopped tapping his foot.

"Sorry," he said, before glancing out the window. For a few moments, there was silence then –

"Dude, don't do that either."

Marcus hesitated, before realizing he had absentmindedly started drumming his fingers against the steering wheel in lieu of tapping his foot.

"Sorry," he said once more.

"And stop fucking apologizing," Orlović snapped. "It's annoying."

"Sorry," Marcus reflexively said, and winced as Orlović facepalmed while Dresden let out a loud laugh from the other side of the cabin.

"Dude, you're making me nervous. Stop it," Orlović demanded.

"Sor – " Marcus began, before managing to catch himself.

"That's not my intention," he said instead.

"Yeah, sure, I know. Still doesn't change the fact you're making me nervous."

"Marcus, why don't you go take a walk?" Dresden suggested. "See if you can't burn off some of that nervous energy. Maybe have a smoke break while you're at it. We'll still be here when you return."

Marcus nodded then popped open the door, shivering as the cold air immediately hit him. Nevertheless, he hopped out of the cab and started walking around the area, both in an effort to keep warm as well as burn off some of his nervous energy. Marcus wasn't ashamed to admit, his nerves were shot as a result of this upcoming operation. And the firefight earlier this morning hadn't helped matters one bit.

As Marcus did his little walked, he also took a look around the area. He, along with the rest of his platoon, were sitting around waiting in some sort of staging area where some soldiers had set up a bunch of heavy mortars in preparation for the nearly upon them attack – Dresden had identified the soldiers as belonging to the 3rd Brigade, 80th Rifle Division, which had apparently arrived on the frontline within the last several hours. How Dresden had known this information, Marcus didn't know, but he supposed it didn't really matter.

Regardless, Marcus and his platoon had arrived to this area roughly half an hour ago in order to deliver a load of 120mm mortar shells, only to find the unit here literally had no room to store them. According to the commander, each mortar had closed to a thousand shells prepared fire at the enemy. So until the attack begun and the mortars began firing away – thus making room to store more shells – the only thing Marcus and his platoon could do was just sit there and wait.

Which was good because in many ways, the sight of so many shells did a lot to help Marcus calm down. Not that he was particularly keen on standing amongst a veritable forest of bombs, as one stray spark and people would finding pieces of him in orbit. But the fact there were so many shells positioned here showed just how much firepower the UNSC had at their fingertips. Even if each one of these shells was only capable of killing _one_ Covenant, the end result would still be a massive amount of alien invaders dead. And surely the Covenant couldn't afford to replace all those troops, right?

No, in some ways Marcus was actually a bit excited for this attack. After all, the sooner they began, the sooner it would be before the Covenant were running away with their tails tucked between their feet. And as soon as that happened, maybe things could actually get back to normal around here. Maybe Marcus could even get a discharge from the Army!

…

…okay, perhaps he was being a bit _too_ optimistic about that last one, but the possibility had go be there, right? All they had to do was start the attack. Which they would.

In exactly six minutes.

 **XXXXX**

 **UNSC** _ **Gabrielle  
**_ **May 7, 2545  
0554**

 **Amber**

Amber sat on her bunk, staring blankly at the data pad she had sitting in her lap. She was supposed to be recording a message that was to be delivered to her family in the event of her untimely death, but Amber found she just couldn't do it. She just couldn't.

Not only did she not know how to put into words everything she wanted to say, she also really didn't want to be thinking about her own mortality right now.

It sounded stupid, she knew, because, what better time was there to face the idea of death when standing on verge of the precipice? But at the same time, there was a part of Amber that couldn't help but think: as long as she continued to deny the possibility of her dying in combat, then it just wouldn't happen.

But of course, real life didn't work that way, did it?

The creaking of the bunk above her head caught Amber's attention, and she looked up in time to see Poolsie poking her head over the edge and stare at Amber with a rather intense look on her face. Amber patiently watched as Poolsie open her mouth as to say something, but then hesitate, and throw a glance at their two GM shipmates who were idly lounging in their own racks in the other side of the berth. At once, Poolsie's face became flushed and she quickly closed her mouth.

'What?' Amber silently mouthed at her, but Poolsie quickly shook her head.

'I'll tell you later,' she mouthed back, and then retreated back to her bunk.

Staring the spot Poolsie's had just been, Amber reached up and scratched her head in confusion. That was weird, but at the same time, that wasn't the first time Poolsie had done something like that and at this point in their friendship, Amber had learned to merely chalk it up as one of her friend's odd quirks.

Taking pains as to not disturb the stilted silence that had formed inside the berth, Amber nevertheless let out a mute sigh before turning back to her data pad, and attempting to force herself to start writing. Only, it felt like she just had some sort of mental block that prevented her actually doing anything. And it wasn't hard to figure out why: in roughly six minutes, Operation: SUDDEN PURGE II would begin.

Technically, the Navy's part of the operation didn't begin at the same time as the ground force's. As part of the plan to try and divide the Covenant Navy's attention, the UNSC Navy had to wait until the ground force had committed to their attack before beginning their part. Nevertheless, Admiral Amarchih – the commander of Sixth Fleet, the fleet that Amber and her ship had been reassigned to within the last few hours – had insisted all ship under his command stand at general quarters roughly at the same time as the ground forces began their attack, just in case.

Which is why Amber and her shipmates were sitting and waiting here, in their sleeping quarters. With all repairs having been completed an hour ago, there wasn't much else Amber and her friends could do, so they had returned to their crew quarters to try and relax.

Not like that was easy under this situation.

Amber finally let out a sigh, cause her friends to jump, and shoved her data pad away. She couldn't do this now. Maybe if she went and go a cup of coffee from the mess or something -

Without warning, a loud whistle came over the intercom, followed immediately by the chiming of an alarm.

" _General quarters, general quarters,"_ the ship's boatswain calmly declared over the ship's 1MC _"All hands, man your battle stations."_

" _The route to general quarters is up and forward to the starboard side, down and aft to the port side. Set condition zebra through the entire ship and prepare for combat!"_

Amber immediately surged to her feet. Grabbing her anti-flash gear, helmet, and vest, she hurtled them on and waited for everyone in the room to finish getting dressed.

"Good luck girls," was all she said before dashing out of the room and heading towards her station. As she did, she happened to glance at a nearby clock:

They were T minus three minutes to H-hour.

 **XXXXX**

" **Northern Front" HQ, Byzas  
May 7, 2545  
0557**

 **Athena**

Athena stood on the balcony, staring down the road where the Army had positioned a couple of their 203mm self-propelled howitzers. Surrounded by at least four ammunition supply vehicles, she could tell they were prepared and ready to begin firing the moment the clock hit zero six hundred hours. For now though, all they could do was wait.

And that was all anyone could really do at this point – wait. All preparations for the attack had been completed. All the soldiers had already been briefed and positioned at their proper jump off points. Every single howitzer, mortar, and MLRS was loaded and pre-sighted at their assigned targets. Ammunition and other critical supplies had been pre-positioned in forward supply depots, ready to move forward alongside the rest of the front lines. MEDEVAC vehicles had been prepared, and all field hospitals were standing by for the influx of wounded warriors. Even the Air Force's bombers were already en route to their designated targeting areas.

Basically, everything and anything Athena could have done to prepare, had already been accomplished.

Athena did her best to avoid fidgeting. She always hated this part. The anticipation and the dread that came with the knowledge that the fighting was about to renew once more. That all the pain and struggles were about to become reality once more.

Without thinking, she glanced at her watch. Again. For the third time in the last minute and a half. She just couldn't help it. They were at exactly T minus three minutes to H-Hour, yet it seemed more like thirty. The seconds on her watch seemed to tick by so slowly.

It was at times like this, Athena kind of wished she was still just a simple Marine rifleman platoon commander. It wasn't because she enjoyed getting shot at, mind you, but it was more to do with the fact that, at the moment, she really didn't have anyone to commiserate with her. The old adage came to mind: "it was lonely at the top," and, as a three star general, Athena had found the statement to be truer than she had ever realized. Sure, there were other general-grade and flag officers at her level, but they were all sitting at their own headquarters, no doubt worrying about the same things Athena was right now.

Of course, even if those other officers did happen to be here, standing right next to Athena at this very instant, it's not like they could really standing around complaining like junior officers or even the enlisted could do. Again, as a general-officer, there were certain unwritten expectations of Athena, one of which was that she was to remain calm, collected, and most of all, _professional_ at all times. Because, after all, when things inevitably went wrong, it would be her responsibility to make it right.

And that was the other thing that she found difficult sometimes: the economy of scale in terms of responsibility. As a platoon commander, Athena had been in charge of about forty Marines, not including herself. While forty Marine was still a lot of people to be responsible for, she was at least able to learn the names of everyone under her command, find out what they were like as Marines, and even get to personally know some of them.

Now? As commander of the entire Northern Front, Athena had close to fifty thousand military personnel under her command. _Fifty thousand._ She didn't even know what fifty thousand people looked like in person. And yet, she was responsible for leading them all to victory?

It was a nearly overwhelming thought.

Movement from down the block caught her eye, and Athena looked up in time to see the howitzer crews climbing out of their vehicles. At first, Athena was confused as to what was going on, but then she remembered when it came to artillery, generally the crew always tried to fire the first shot from a few meters away, as a safety precaution just in case the first shell exploded inside the breach.

Athena glanced at her watch. They were officially at T minus thirty seconds to H-Hour.

"And away we go," she whispered to herself as she watched as the artillerymen set up a lanyard. They would be firing in three…

Two…

One…

" _ **FIRE!"**_

* * *

1. **BX:** BX stands for **B** ase e **X** change. Basically, it's a general store/small mall on some military bases where active and former military personnel can go to buy good like uniforms, food, alcohol, etc., or where they can go to obtain certain services like barber shops, or dry cleaners, or even vehicle maintenance. As is common with most things in the US military, each service branch has their own name for it: in the Army, they're known as the "PX" ( **p** ost e **x** change,) while the Navy calls it the "NEX" ( **n** aval **ex** change,) and the Marines call it the "MCX" ( **M** arine **C** orpse **X** change.)

2\. Athena mentions in the chapter she's in charge of a little over fifty thousand troops. While that's certainly a lot of people, a couple of caveats to keep in mind. First, most of Athena's troops are still in orbit, or have yet to arrive in the system. Second thing to keep in mind is the "tooth-to-tail" ratio, which is basically the ratio between the number of "combat troops" (like the infantry, tankers, artillerymen, combat engineers, fighter pilots, etc.) and "support troops" (like truck drivers, mechanics, engineers, etc.) There aren't any real hard numbers that I'm aware of, but I've seen sources state that the tooth-to-tail ratio for the entire US Army is roughly 28%. As in, 28% of the entire US Army are considered "combat arms troops." In other countries, that ratio could be even higher, with some armies being one in ten soldiers. As in, only ten percent of their armies are combat soldiers.

For the Marine Corps, the ratio is usually skewed the other way due to their expeditionary nature, which means they need to travel fairly light. Again, I don't know any specific numbers, but I doubt it would break even 30%.

 **Author's Note**

Something I sort of started to explain back in my notes for chapter 37, but never really got into (because there was a lot of information already present in that chapter alone,) was how the structure of the Air Force goes.

Something I'm doing in this story that I haven't really done before so I figured I'd give it a try, is try to modify the structure of the UNSC a bit in order to make it seem less of a "United States military in space," and more of a "human military that draws heritage from multiple nation's militaries." What I mean by that is, I've been trying to bring in subtle and minor structural and cultural differences from different militaries around the as opposed to strictly sticking with the United States.

Obviously there's some fundamental things I can't and or don't really want to change, as that's stuff that's been established in canon (like ranks,) but other, minor things, I think I would like to try something different. The big thing would be the UNSC Air Force: as opposed to being influenced by the USAF, one thing that I've been trying to do is add on more of a British Royal Air Force as, it was (at least during WWII,) one of the largest air forces in the world.

One of those changes I've tried to adapt is more of a RAF structure, as opposed to a USAF one (which coincidently makes it more like a USN aviation structure.) So, instead of "squadron," "group," then "wing," unit sizes would be "squadron," "wing," and then "group." Going higher would then be a "Tactical Air Force" (as opposed to a USAF "command,") _then_ a "Command" (as opposed to a USAF "numbered air force.")

There is also one other change I've added in that, given how large the UNSCAF would theoretically be (and covering the vast amounts of planets and colonies it would be,) I thought it would be beneficial if there was actually one more layer of organization. So I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to insert an "Air Division" in the command structure, placing it between a "Group" and a "Tactical Air Force." The idea being that Air Divisions would be the command in charge of different sections **on** a colony, whereas Tactical Air Forces would be responsible for the entire colony (so, in other words, a colony would have multiple air divisions in both orbit and on the surface that would all report to a single TAF.)

So, UNSCAF unit structure would look like this (smallest to largest)

 **Section** **– Flight – Squadron – Wing – Group – Air Division – Tactical Air Force – Command.**

So, to use an example, Zelda is part of No 187 Fighter Squadron, of the No 103 Fighter Wing, of the No 75th Fighter Wing, of the No 112 Air Division, which helps covers Actium's NORTHCOM area. However, Actium itself is the responsibility of the Fifty-Second Tactical Air Force, who in turn would report to FLEETCOM Sector Twelve (Confused yet? There's a reason why a lot of this crap gets put in my noted and not in my story – it gets too confusing to keep track of, even for me.)

Something else to note:

\- "Air Division" is not a unit used by the RAF. It's actually supposed to be from the Russian Air Force (though they seem to use both the term "air division" and "aviation division,") but I actually found out later "Air Division" was a unit that used to be used by the USAF (in roughly the exact same way as I'm depicting here in this story,) and is currently a unit used by the Canadian Air Force (in lieu of "Groups.") So, lucky me I guess.

\- the naming of the units itself is sort of a blend between the RAF and the USAF. As far as I can tell, the RAF actually doesn't differentiate between different types like the USAF does (so, it's No 1 Squadron, not No 1 Fighter Squadron or No 1 Bomber Squadron.) I added the type of aircraft to the unit name because again, given how large the UNSCAF would theoretically be, if they used the sequential numbering system like the RAF does, then numbers would be ridiculously high (like having a No. 10,000 Squadron, or something like that.)


	42. Chapter 41

**Chapter 41**

 **Central Byzas, Thracia Province  
May 7, 2545  
0545 (T minus fifteen minutes to H-Hour)**

 **Selene**

Selene stumbled and fell.

Landing heavily in the snow, Selene quietly suppressed a groan of pain. God dammit.

"Let me ask you something, Riddle," Shin conversationally began as he reached down and help Selene up to her feet for the third time in the last two hours. "Are you normally this clumsy in real life?"

"I can't help it: my feet are frozen again," Selene mumbled as she tried to brush the snow off her clothes. Not that it helped: her clothes were already soaking wet.

"Didn't you dry yourself off in front of that kid's fire a couple hours ago? How are you cold already?"

As much as she really wanted to, Selene found she was just too cold to even roll her eyes.

"I can't help how small I am," she numbly pointed out instead. "I don't have the mass to retain heat as long as you."

"Well, try to keep up," Shin insisted. "Hopefully it'll be warmer where we're going… where _are_ we going by the way?"

"Ingalls Financial," Selene replied through chattering teeth.

"That's sounds like a bank."

"Good. Because that's what it is."

"Ah," Shin replied with a nod. "And why exactly are we going to a bank?"

"Because they had an underground vault," Selene tiredly answered.

Out of the corner of her eye, Selene could see Shin's head snapping up.

"They have a vault?" Shin replied, sounding amused. "Why the hell would those dumbass spend money on building a damn vault? With digitization, who still uses _actual_ , physical money anymore?"

"…you know people put more than just money inside vaults, right? People also put stuff that, maybe don't necessarily have monetary value attached, but are valuable on a sentimental and emotional level."

"Yeah? Like what?" Shin asked, sounding genuinely curious.

"Like…" Selene trailed off as she realized she couldn't actually think of any examples off the top of her head. "…the point is, the vault is underground and very secure. We should be safe."

"Unless we take a direct hit," Shin announced in a sort of singsongy voice. "Then we'll _be_ a safe."

He let out a loud chortle, only to immediately stop at the odd look Selene gave him.

"You know… because we'll be blown to smithereens? So, we would be coating the inside of the vault with our guts?" Shin prompted, before frowning. "Come on. That was funny. _Laugh_."

Selene decided to ignore him. Instead, she looked around the area, just in case they were about to accidently run into a Covenant patrol, but there was no one around. And as odd as that may have sounded, that kind of scared her. She hated to be cliché, but it was just a bit too quiet around here for her liking. Fact of the matter was, despite this area nominally being under Covenant control, there was a surprisingly _lack_ of Covenant activity. Or activity in general. And Selene couldn't help but wonder why.

Without warning, Selene felt a shiver travel down her spine, one that had nothing to do with the cold. She didn't know why, but for some reason, she suddenly had a bad feeling about this place. Her mother used to describe the sensation as "someone walking across her grave," which Selene never quite understood even if she was able to grasp the sentiment.

Slowly scanning the area around her, Selene found herself reaching for her waistband and pulling out her sidearm.

"What is it?" she heard Shin ask, all traces of humor gone from his voice and replaced with deadly seriousness.

"I'm not sure," Selene quietly admitted. "It's just… do you get the feeling that we're being watched?"

"No…" Shin skeptically said. Yet, nevertheless, out of the corner of Selene's eye, she could see him pulling out the extendable baton she had given yesterday. "What direction?"

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Selene couldn't help but roll her eyes. If she knew that…

 _clatter_

Without warning, a small stone abruptly rolled out into the middle of the street from a nearby pile of rubble. Selene instinctively pointed her weapon in that direction, but before she could do anything, Shin abruptly grabbed her arm and practically dragged her down the street before shoving her into cover behind a nearby car.

Realizing she had been standing out in the open like an idiot, Selene silently nodded her thanks, only Shin wasn't even looking at her. Instead, he was carefully scanning the area.

"See anything?" she whispered after a few seconds.

"No," Shin quietly replied without breaking eye contact. "Check our six."

Selene immediately did a half pivot and glanced down the road behind them. With it being still as dark as it was, her sightlines were limited, but it was clear there was no one behind them.

"Clear," she mutely reported.

"Come on you fucker," she heard Shin whisper. "Where you hiding?"

Nervously, Selene lowered her pistol and did a quick chamber check to make sure her firearm was loaded, before raising it up once more. For the next few seconds, the two of them stayed there, crouched behind that car until –

"Delta Six Zero?"

Selene automatically tensed at the sound of someone's call, and because of that, it took her a few moments to realize what had been said. Delta Six Zer… wait a minute… that was _her._ That was her police call sign. And the only people who would have known that would have been officers from her precinct. And, given the accent of the voice, it could only be one person…

Ignoring the warning hiss Shin directed at her, Selene raised her head.

"Charlie One Seven?" she experimentally yelled out.

To her immense relief, the same voice from before immediately replied, "Yea! Hold your fire, we're coming out!"

Selene excitedly gestured at Shin to hold his fire – even though he didn't even have a gun – as, about halfway down the block, she could see the shadowy outline of five figures emerging from behind a large pile of rubble. Selene hurriedly stood up and waved at them, and immediately all five figures began jogging in her direction.

Putting her pistol away, Selene ignored the questioning looks Shin was sending her way as she waited for the first figure to reach her, hoping she wasn't wrong about the man's identity. Fortunately she wasn't as, looming out of the darkness came –

"Sergeant Dawlish!" Selene greeted, doing her best to remain quiet yet, at the same time, she couldn't quite hide her excitement.

"Officer Riddle," Dawlish returned as he transferred the SMG he was carrying from one hand to the other before glancing at the figures behind him. "Come on, you lot, hurry up!"

Selene waited a bit impatiently as the remaining four people – which consisted of one young man, an older woman, and presumably her two children – came scrambling around the car to join them.

"Cadet Mathews, watch our arse while I talk to Officer Riddle here," Dawlish hissed at the young man, who nodded in response. "Officer Riddle, I – blimey Riddle, is that all you got for the cold? Here, take this 'fore you freeze to death."

Before Selene could even protest, Dawlish was removing his leather jacket and throwing it over Selene's shoulders. The jacket stunk of sweat, spit, chewing tobacco, and gunpowder, but it was warm, so Selene swallowed her protest and accepted the jacket without raising a fuss.

"Sergeant Dawlish," Selene said as soon as she found her words once more. "What are you doing here?"

"Could ask ta same 'bout you, Riddle," Dawlish immediately retorted. "Woulda reckoned you'd been evacuated off-world by now."

"Volunteered to help man a military roadblock, ended up getting cut off," Selene hurriedly explained, before pausing as she suddenly remembered something. "Dawlish: Kingsley's… he's gone."

"Wot?" Dawlish asked, sounding shocked.

"Lieutenant Kingsley," Selene repeated. "He's… he's dead."

Dawlish very slowly let out a loud exhale.

"It would seem, so is half the department," he sadly reported as soon as he was done. "Lost half me team to Covenant snipers, other half to mortar bombs and the like. Ended up having to do a runner. Accidently ran into this lot," he jerked his head towards the civilians, "and now, here we are."

Selene sadly nodded as she looked the civilians over, and as she did, she happened to notice the young man – Mathews, as Dawlish had called him – was wearing what appeared to be some sort of uniform.

"The kid military?" Selene asked.

"Not exactly, ma'am," Mathews replied. "JROTC."

"Mathews is me girlfriends boy," Dawlish announced, seemingly as way of explanation. "He's a good lad."

Selene nodded, not really having a reason to doubt Dawlish. "Where are you going Dawlish?"

"Trying to find a way outta this shitehole," he gruffly replied. "You?"

"Trying to find some place to hide," Selene admitted. "Guess there's a UNSC counterattack coming, and I'd rather not get caught in the crossfire."

Dawlish stared at her for a full minute, before he unexpectedly reached up and smacked himself in the face.

"Oh naff," Selene heard him muttering. "You bloody plonker. Here I was, wonderin' where all the Covenant were. Didn't even think of a UNSC attack was incoming."

He suddenly fixed Selene with a hard gaze. "Who warned you about this attack?"

Selene briefly wondered if she should be offended, but then decided now wasn't the time. "Shin."

"Who the bloody hell is that?"

Selene jumped as she realized she had forgotten all about Shin. She glanced behind her where Shin was standing, idly watching the conversation, and gestured for him to step forward.

"Dawlish, this is Joshua Shin," Selene introduced. "He's a soldier with the… Marines?"

"Air Force," Shin corrected. "And I'm not a Soldier, I'm an Airman."

"Right…" Selene skeptically replied. "At any case, this is Sergeant John Dawlish, my supervisor."

"How ya doin'?" Shin greeted, extending his hand.

To Selene's surprise, Dawlish ignored the hand and instead, opted to stare at Shin with an intense expression on his face.

"Oy. Dun I know you?" he abruptly asked.

Selene could see Shin blinking in confusion.

"I don't think so," Shin simply said as he lowered his hand.

"Nah, I'm pretty sure I do," Dawlish insisted. "I def seen you face before."

"Well, I did get arrested yesterday morning, so maybe you saw me when Officer Riddle was bringing me into the station," Shin suggested, but Selene immediately shook her head.

"No, Dawlish was gone by the time I returned," Selene pointed out, trying to do her best to keep the annoyance out of her voice, but failing. After all, the reason why Dawlish hadn't been there was because he had tricked Selene into taking a double shift, while he had only worked one.

Maybe that was the reason why Selene was having trouble staying focused. She had already started the invasion with a deficit in sleep…

At any case, Shin was shrugging his shoulders.

"Then, I don't know," he dismissively replied. "Maybe we ran into each other on a different colony?"

A thought occurred to Selene. "Hey, Dawlish, didn't you say you were in the Army before you were a cop? Maybe you guys ran into each other on the battlefield at some point."

"Mebbe," Dawlish with a suspicious glare. "Where'd you see action?"

Shin gave another indifferent shrug. "All over. If you're a veteran, then you know how it is."

"Where. Specifically," Dawlish insisted.

Selene could see Shin throwing her a questioning look, but all she could do was shrug. She had no idea where Dawlish was going with this line of questioning.

"Draco III," Shin finally said. "Miridem back in '44. And Alluvion in '42."

"Alluvion, huh? Ever make it to Fallow 'fore the end?"

Shin gave an absentminded nod. "Yeah. Was there when the Covies arrived."

Now it was Selene's turn to be confused and she turned to stare at Dawlish.

"Dawlish, didn't you always tell us that you spent your entire time on Fallow guarding a military _prison_?" she asked.

"I did," Dawlish bluntly replied.

Maybe it was a combination of the cold and her exhaustion, but it took an embarrassingly long amount of time for Selene to realize the implications of that statement. But when she did, Selene felt her eyes widen.

"Well…" Selene slowly began, even as she found herself taking an involuntary step away from Shin. "Shin, you said you're a military cop, right? Maybe… maybe he was one of the guards?"

"Weren't no Rock Apes at that glasshouse," Dawlish bluntly stated as the rest of the group began to look at Shin with a bit of hint and suspicion. Shin didn't say a word, but Selene did notice what almost seemed like a hint of a smirk appearing on his face.

"Well, maybe it was something else?" Selene meekly suggested even though she had admit, she was starting to wonder why she was even trying to defend Shin.

"Sorry to interrupt."

Selene reflexively jumped as Mathews unexpectedly spoke up from behind her, and she glanced at him, only to see him cocking his head, looking puzzled.

"But does anyone else hear that car?" he continued.

Selene blinked and then started to listen to the area around her. Now that Mathews mentioned it, there almost did seem to be a growing roar of an engine or something -

"INCOMING!" Shin suddenly roared, causing Selene to jump.

 _ **KABOOM KABOOM!**_

Without warning, a series of earth-shaking explosions ripped through the buildings at the very end of the block, tearing the walls apart and throwing shrapnel, masonry, and steel in all directions. The shockwave shot down the street, bringing with it one massive cloud of dust and knocking everyone down to the ground, and Selene found herself gasping for air as she struggled to get back up.

But unfortunately it didn't end there…

The sound of inhuman shrieking continued to fill the air as more and more metal objects began dropping from the sky, like some sort of strangely shaped hailstones, only these hailstones exploded into fiery orange-red fireballs the moment they hit the ground. The thudding of falling debris was quickly drowned out by the whistling of shrapnel and other such material whipping by overhead flooded Selene's ears, as did the terrified screams of everyone around her.

"THE ATTACK HAS BEGUN!" Shin yelled at the top of his lungs, even as a nearby building took several direct hits and promptly collapsed with a bone-rattling roar. "WE GOTTA FIND SOME COVER! RIDDLE! WHERE THE FUCK ARE WE GOING!?"

"INGALLS FINANCIAL!" Selene yelled back. "IT'S THIS WAY!"

She pointed in the direction of the bank, which was fortunately in the complete opposite direction of where the heaviest of explosions were taking part, though it was hard to tell as there were explosions _everywhere._ Nevertheless, there appeared to be a very small clearing through the hailstorm of steel, though it was rapidly closing.

"ALRIGHT YOU LOT, EVERYONE ON YOUR FEET!" Dawlish hollered, taking over. "GO, AND DON'T LOOK BACK!"

Selene didn't think, she just surged to her feet and started running. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Dawlish scooping up one of the kids before he too took off, but that was all Selene could see as she was too focused on trying to stay alive. All the while, all sorts of shells just continued to rain down from above.

Chunks of rocks were landing all around all around and on Selene, but fortunately the jacket that Dawlish had given her was thick enough that it was able to protect her from getting too seriously injured, even though she knew she was going to be black and blue for a month, regardless. The bigger issue was trying to maintain her footing: with each explosion, the very ground seemed to rock, making Selene feel like she standing on a boat in the middle of the ocean during a really bad hurricane.

But with more shells dropping down by the _second_ , Selene found she didn't have a choice but to figure out a way to manage.

Selene didn't know whether it was because of an explosion or simply because of her numb feet, but she unexpectedly found herself falling forward and landing flat on her face. She hurriedly moved to scramble to her feet even as the rest of the group dodged past her, but with the way the ground was buckling, even something as simple as getting back on her feet was difficult.

A pair of hands suddenly grabbed her.

"Come on! Get up! Get up!" the young kid, Mathews, was suddenly screaming in her ear.

"Just go! I'll be fine, get out of here!" Selene yelled back. "Keep moving, kid, don't worry about me!"

 _ **WABOOM!**_

Selene reflexively ducked as she felt something hot whip past her head, missing her skull by mere millimeters, and at first she didn't think anything of it until the sound of Mathews screaming in pain caused her to look up.

Mathews was gripping his upper right leg. A jagged piece of metal was sticking out from his flesh and vibrant red blood was just _gushing_ from the wound. The sight electrified Selene, and she hurtled herself upright and towards Mathews.

"Hang in there kid!" Selene yelled, grabbing a hold of one of his arms and throwing it around her shoulder. "You're going to be alright! Just hang on! Just hang – "

 _ **BOOM PEWWWWW!**_

Something warm splashed across Selene's face, causing her to blink even as she struggled to maintain her footing as Mathews suddenly pitched forward. Trying to clear her eyes even as she continued down the street as best she could, it took Selene a couple of seconds to realize Mathews was no longer screaming, and she looked down to figure out why. What she saw horrified her.

A piece of shrapnel had struck Mathews in the back of the head in such a way, it had essentially scalped him. The top chuck of his head and skull were gone, leaving behind a bloody hole that, if Selene stared at it carefully, she could almost see Mathews' brain matter. The sight nearly caused Selene to empty her stomach and she would have if another explosion hadn't gone off nearby, showering her debris and reminding her where she was.

"Shit. Fuck!" she screamed as she started to drag the body with her, but then she just happened to glance behind her to see the car she and rest of the group had been cowering behind not even a minute ago take a direct hit, and it made her realize the explosions were getting _closer_ by the second _._ She had to focus on saving herself now.

Throwing one last mournful look at Mathews, she allowed his body to slide to the ground before taking off once more. With a sense of regret, shame, and anger driving her forward, it didn't take Selene long to reach the bank.

"COME ON COME ON COME ON!" Dawlish was urging from the entrance of the building. "INSIDE, GET INSIDE! SELENE, HURRY UP!"

Stumbling as yet another explosion erupted behind her, Selene managed to maintain her footing and make it to the entrance, with Dawlish dashing inside right behind on her heels.

"DAWLISH!" she started to scream as soon as she was close enough. "DAWLISH! MATHEWS IS – "

"WAIT!" Dawlish yelled before Selene could finish. "WHERE'S MATHEWS!? DID WE LEAVE HIM!?"

Without another word, Dawlish headed back outside and back down the street in the direction they had just come from.

"No, WAIT!" Selene yelled, even as she reach out to try and stop –

There was no noise. There was no warning. One moment, Selene was reaching for Dawlish, the next, her ears were ringing and she found herself on her back looking straight up at the ceiling.

Coughing, Selene sat up and looked towards the entrance to see –

\- nothing. Much of the sidewalk outside, the entrance itself, and Dawlish were all gone. Left in its place was a small, bloodied crater.

Selene stared at the crater, shocked, for nearly a full minute, before numbly picking herself off the ground and stumbling towards the rear of the building where the vault was. As she did, she felt something warm roll down her face, and when she reached up to feel what it was, she wasn't surprised to find it was a combination of blood and tears.

Dawlish was gone. And so was Mathews.

Selene could only hope the Covenant were suffering as much as she was right now.

 **XXXXX**

 **Covenant designated Landing Zone: Deliverance  
Forerunner Designated World: MS 222-53 a  
9th Age of Reclamation  
3rd Planet Cycle**

 **Zek**

"Blessed Ancestors, I humbly beg thee to offer your divine protection to those most devote and righteous who follow your wisdom and – "

 _boom._

"- who seek nothing more than to bask in your most holy greatness in the hopes that one day the wretched will – "

 _Boom._

" – be allowed admittance into thy most Holy Kingdom. But if – "

 _ **Boom.**_

" – it is your will that your most devote follower shall fall, I humbly beg thee for guidance whilst traveling along the most Great Jour- "

 _ **KABOOM!**_

Zek jumped and Rezan let out a loud screech of alarm as one of the human's mortar bombs exploded directly overhead, causing the entire shelter they were in to shake. Mountains of dust came pouring down from the ceiling, covering Zek in a fine layer, but he dared not even move to brush it off as the screaming of another three approaching shells filled the air.

 _ **BABABABOOM!**_

The three shells exploded in such rapid succession, the noise of the explosions seemed to meld together and become one massive blast instead. An ominous creaking filled the shelter, and Zek waited to see if the next breath he took was to be his last. But then, slowly but surely, the noise of the eruptions began to fade away. They didn't entirely stop, as the human bombardment of the city continued without abatement, however it was clear the mortars were no longer landing within the vicinity of the building Zek and his comrades were cowering in.

Zek slowly released his breath. They were safe.

For now…

"Holy Ancestors, protect us with your divine light, grant us the strength to carry on, and should we falter, guide us back to the path with your ever comforting talon. For we are but hatchlings, begging to bathe in your mere presence!"

Zek couldn't help but snarl as Rezan immediately began praying again. Rezan had started praying the moment the bombardment had begun, and he hadn't stopped since. While Zek understand Rezan's need to ask for both protection and guidance, he had to admit, between Rezan's nonstop nattering, coupled with the stress and concussion forces from all the explosions, Zek found himself nearly at his wit's end.

"May your divine light guide us through the canopy of darkness," Rezan continued to chant, seemingly unaware of the annoyed glare Zek was sending his way. "May you not allow evil to touch us. May the Holy Rings be set alight and all those heretics be purified!"

As Rezan continued in this manner, Zek did his best to ignore him as the world above them was ripped apart, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to do so.

"Help us, Holy Ones, and hear our plea!"

Finally, Zek decided he couldn't take it anymore.

"Will you cease your incessant chirping!?" he snapped.

In response, Rezan bared his teeth in Zek's direction, before promptly ignoring him.

"Oh Great Ones!" he wailed. "We are weak! Protect us from those who wish us harm!"

"Stop it," Zek insisted. "Stop it!"

"We are the faithful! Protect us from those who wish to take away our faith!"

"Stop it!" Zek snarled. "STOP IT! STOPITSTOPITSTOPIT!"

"YOU STOP IT!" Rezan retorted. "Oh Mighty Matriarchs, _hear my plea!"_

That gave Zek pause, and he stared at him, incredulous.

"What… what madness is this?" he demanded to know. "Rezan, have you taken leave of your senses? You're praying to the _Old Gods?"_

"I'M PRAYING TO WHOMEVER WILL LISTEN!" Rezan screeched. "Oh Might Matriarchs of the old! Help us through these troubling times!"

"Stop it!" Zek roared. "Praying to the Ancestors is one thing, but praying to the Matriarchs of old? This is _blasphemy!"_

Without warning, a heavy weight landed on Zek's shoulder, causing him to jump with fright and whirl around, but fortunately it was only Ziik.

"Tranquility, Zek, tranquility," Ziik urged in a soothing voice as he gave a comforting pat on Zek's shoulder. "Brother Rezan means no harm, and I am certain the Ancestors will understand his desperation, and overlook his current blasphemous nature. You need not worry about the wrath of the Gods."

"Tis not the wrath of the Gods that concern me, but that of the Sangheili," Zek snarled as he shrugged Ziik's hand off. " _And_ that of the humans."

Ziik gestured indifferently and opened his mouth to respond, but then the sound of the human cannons began to grow in pitch once more, causing all present within the shelter to look up at the ceiling once more.

"The human guns return!" Ziik called out. "Take shelter!"

Zek immediately dropped down into a crouch, trying to make himself as small as possible, as the explosions started to come closer and louder to the shelter once again.

 _boom. Boom. BABOOM._

With every explosion, Zek found himself gasping for breath. He wasn't sure how much more this he could take but unfortunately, as the blasts continued, he knew there would be no respite.

. And yet, the blasts continued, regardless.

 _BOOM! KABOOM!_ _ **KABOOM!**_

Zek found himself trembling as the shells started exploding directly overhead, with each explosion sounding like a crack of lightning. And it acted like one too: with every eruption, the very building Zek was in rattled and shook, and… was that his imagination, or were cracks beginning to form in the ceiling?

He glanced at his comrades to see if they were seeing the same thing he was. Rezan was still praying under his breath, so he wasn't paying attention, however Ziik had a very alarmed look on his face.

Voi paska…

"WE MUST FIND NEW SHELTER!" Ziik hollered over the increasing sound of explosions.

"WHAT!? HAVE YOU GONE MAD? IF WE LEAVE, WE WILL _DIE!"_ Rezan screamed back.

"RYÖKÄLE! IF WE DON'T LEAVE, WE WILL ALSO DIE! LOOK!" Zek yelled, jabbing a finger in the direction of the ceiling.

"I AM _NOT_ LEAVING!"

"IF YOU DO NOT, THEN THIS SHALL BE YOUR TOMB! THIS SHELTER CANNOT SUSTAIN MUCH MORE DAMAGE!"

"IT WILL HOLD!" Rezan insisted. "WE MERELY NEED PRAY – "

 _ **SCREEEEEEEEE!**_

Without warning, the loud shriek of tearing metal filled the air and Zek's ears were suddenly filled with a typhoon of noise as the roof to their shelter was unexpectedly torn away, leaving them exposed in the open. Zek's senses were instantly overloaded as all sorts of sights, smells, sounds, and concussive forces hit him simultaneously: bright flashes, the acrid smell of explosive residue, the screeching of shrapnel being propelled through the air at high speeds, and of course the nonstop concussion forces as bomb after bomb rained down on the city.

" **WE NEED NEW SHELTER!"** Zek screamed at the top of his lungs and this time, Rezan didn't protest. Instead, he activated his pavise and held it over his head like an umbrella. Not that it would protect him against a direct hit…

" **WE MUST GO! FOLLOW ME!"** Ziik roared before taking off and without pausing to even think, Zek took off after him.

Zek sprinted down the street faster than he had ever ran before in his life. He skipped through crater after crater like they were nothing more than puddles after a rainstorm, and leapt over mounds of debris like he was a sleipnir. Anything and everything he could do to survive this nightmare.

Behind him, he could feel more shells hitting the building they had just vacated, causing the entire thing to collapse and engulfing Zek in a cloud of dust, but he dared not look back. Instead, he merely tucked his head down and ran faster.

" **WHERE ARE WE GOING!?"** he heard Rezan holler.

" **ANOTHER SHELTER! JUST DOWN THIS PATH!"** Ziik yelled back. **"RUN FASTER!"**

Zek didn't bother wasting breath trying to reply.

Stumbling over the broken and shattered road, trying to maintain his balance as the very ground buckled and heaved, Zek looked up to see another shelter looming out of the darkness. This one was very similar to the one Zek and his comrades had just abandoned: dug slightly into the ground, it was directly integrated into a nearby building for added protection, and then reinforced utilizing material scavenged from the various human vehicles strewn about. Unlike the one Zek had built, this shelter had a few gun slits carved into the side, in order to act as a firing pit, however whether or not it was currently manned, Zek couldn't tell.

Nevertheless, the sight of the shelter filled Zek with a sense of hope, and he found himself somehow finding just a bit more speed.

" **ALMOST THERE!"** he heard Ziik yell out. **"JUST A BIT MORE!"**

" **WHERE IS THE ENTRANCE!?"** Zek demanded to know.

Before Ziik could reply, the answer presented itself when a panel on the side suddenly swung open, and two T'vaoans poked their heads out.

" **BROTHERS!"** they yelled. **"OVER HERE! HURRY!"**

With safety just a short distance away, Zek found himself overcome with a frantic energy. He hurriedly tossed his rifle aside so that he wouldn't be as burdened, and then dug his claws deeper into the ground and found himself pulling ahead of both Rezan and Ziik.

Gesturing at the two unknown T'vaoans to move out of the way, Zek angled himself towards the entrance and was just about to leap through when –

 _ **SWOOOSHHHHHH! BOOOMMMM!**_

Zek was blown head over heels backwards!

Landing heavily on the ground on his back, Zek instinctively rolled to the side and was thus able to avoid getting skewered in the abdomen by a large chunk of metal.

Rolling upright, Zek glanced at the shelter only to see it had taken a direct hit from one of the human shells, thoroughly destroying it. Flames were already consuming what remained and even as Zek watched, there was a fury blue explosion reminiscent of a plasma grenade detonation. Of the two T'vaoans that had been calling out to him, there was no sign.

Zek wasn't given long to dwell on the tragedy as a piece of shrapnel unexpectedly ricocheted off his shoulder armor, leaving his arm sporting. He frantically looked around for someplace else to hide, but with the entire city seemingly being ripped apart, there wasn't anywhere he could go.

No! He wasn't going to die like this!

" **ZEK! OVER HERE!"**

Rezan's shout somehow managed to carry over all explosions, and Zek looked over to his right in time to see Rezan crawling through one of the small slits in the ground that Zek knew lead to the humans' sewage retention system. Without hesitation, Zek hauled himself to his feet and dashed over to the hole and threw himself into a slide.

Under normal circumstances, the slit would have been far too narrow for Zek to have fit, but somehow, in his desperation, Zek was able to make his way inside without complication. He found himself inside a cramped concrete box. The entire box smelled of refuse, the bottom third was filled with dirty frozen water, and there was barely enough room to fit one Kig-Yar, much less three, so Zek found his face pressed up against Rezan's armpit, but with the humans still doing their best to destroy their own city, Zek was in no condition to complain.

Without warning, a tsunami of dust came hurtling through the slit as a bomb detonated just outside their hiding spot, filling the air and making it difficult to breath. Nevertheless, Zek heard someone screaming with fright at the top of their lungs, and it took him a minute to realize it was himself. The bombardment continued and just when Zek was about to make his peace with the Ancestors –

\- a miracle happened.

Because Zek was trembling so much, both out of fear and all the concussive forces, he almost didn't notice it at first. But when the dust inside the basin began to settle, it became rather obvious.

"The guns…" Rezan said, his voice full of wonder. "They've stopped…"

Zek cocked his head. Sure enough, he no longer heard the thumping of explosions, the whistling of incoming shells, and the screaming of shrapnel flying through the air. Aside from the mute noise of falling rubble, it was quiet.

"We… we survived?" Zek said, astonished. "We are still among the living? HAHA! We LIVE!"

With relief flooding his veins, Zek couldn't help but start to laugh out loud and beside him, he could feel Rezan doing the same. They were alive!

"Quiet."

Zek instantly fell silent at Ziik's harsh demand. For a moment, he stood there, waiting. But unfortunately, he couldn't figure out why Ziik had demanded silence and after a while, he began to grow impatient.

"What is it Brother?" he demanded to know.

Even in the dark, cramp place, he could see Ziik throwing a questioning look in his direction.

"Do you not hear that noise?"

Having been nearly rendered deaf by all the explosions, it was rather difficult for Zek to hear anything. Regardless, he did his best to strain his ears.

At first, he was unsuccessful. But then… he heard it. A low but steady roar that was only growing in pitch.

"What is that?" he heard Rezan asking.

Zek shivered.

"Enemy aircraft," he reluctantly replied as he mentally began bracing himself, his relief at his survival having already all but dissipated. "And they are coming this way."

It would appear the humans were _not_ done with their attack just yet.

 **XXXXX**

 **North Euxine Ocean, Actium  
May 7, 2545  
0625**

 **Zelda**

Zelda had to admit, he was feeling more like himself now. He didn't know why, but there was just something about flying that made him feel so _alive_. Perhaps it was all the space, or maybe it was all the freedom, but whatever the case was, as long as Zelda was in the air, he would instantly be in a better mood, even if all they were currently doing was some basic formation flying instead of the fancy aerobics he was used to.

He glanced around. At the moment, he and the rest of his squadron were flying ass-end of one massive formation of Air Force aircraft. Consisting of several dozen Wombats, Broadswords, Shortswords, and even a few Longswords, this formation represented the vast majority of the combat assets the 112th Air Division that was being dedicating towards Operation: SUDDEN PURGE II. Armed to the teeth with several hundred kilograms worth of explosives, the entire formation was at present, making their way towards the city of Byzas in order to drop their payload.

And what a payload it was. During their briefing, Lieutenant General Gordon Shreve, commander of the 112th AirDiv, had informed his pilots he wanted the Air Force - and not the Army or the Marines - to be the ones to break the Covenant's spine, and so had equipped his aircraft with enough ordnance to practically level the city.

Of course, having an appropriate payload was one thing, but being able to deliver it was another; the problem was, there wasn't enough room over the city for all of the Air Force's aircraft to hit Byzas at the same time, so instead, the planes would approach in waves.

Hitting the city first would be an entire group of Wombats. Armed with anti-radiation missiles and Mark 208 one hundred twenty kilogram bombs, it would be the job of the Wombats to clear out any potential Covenant AA the mud crunchers might have missed.

Following in their wake would be a squadron of SS-110 Longsword air superiority fighters, ready to engage any Covenant aircraft foolish enough to try and attempt to contest the air. None were really expected as it simply wouldn't make much sense, so the Longswords were more of an insurance policy than anything. But, in the event there was no opposition, the Longswords would at least be able to strafe the city with their 110mm rotary cannons.

Of course, once the sky was confirmed to be clear, that was when the main body of the attack would hit: the Shortsword bombers.

Consisting of exactly seventeen bombers pulled from the No 23 and 321 Bombardment Squadrons, each Shortsword was carrying sixteen Mark 211 one thousand kilogram bombs, for a total of two hundred and seventy-two bombs, or nearly a hundred and thirty thousand kilograms worth of high explosives. Not only did each bomb pack one hell of a punch, they were also rated for bunker busting meaning they were capable of punching through a wide variety of obstacles such as walls, roofs, and even asphalt roads; perfect for a densely packed city look Byzas as that meant there would be no place the Covenant could hide.

However, if that wasn't enough, there was one final wave of aircraft following the bombers. Consisting of four Broadsword squadrons – including Zelda's – each Broadsword was carrying either four BLU-328/C fuel air explosives or CBU-777 cluster munitions, half a dozen Scorpion ATGMs, and a handful of AAMs for self-defense.

All in all, it was going to be one hell of a light show, and Zelda couldn't wait to see it.

" _Sorry, but… is someone_ _ **humming**_ _?"_

Zelda absentmindedly looked up at the sound of Omega-3's comment before, with a start, he realized the person in question was actually _himself_ : apparently, at some point in his good cheer, Zelda had started humming to himself which, unfortunately, his microphone had picked up on and transmitted across the squadron dedicated channel.

Zelda could feel his cheeks start to warm up in embarrassment, but rather than stay quiet or even deny it, he decided he would own it instead.

"Yeah, that's me," Zelda announced as cockily and as confidently as he could. "What… you got a problem with it?"

" _Ehhh,"_ Omega-3 began. _"I'll be the first to admit, you're not quite strangling the cat, but… don't quit your day job."_

"Yeah?" Zelda shot back as he glanced to his left in Omega-3's direction. "Well, maybe you should quit yours, JT."

" _What? What's that supposed to mean?"_ Omega-3/JT, demanded to know.

"It means your flying sucks dude!"

" _What!? What's wrong with my flying!?"_

"You fly like an old dude, man," Zelda sneered. "All timid and slow like. Like you can't see the damn sky in front of you. Turtle."

" _Ha!"_ JT triumphantly declared. _"Joke's on you, Zelda: I_ _ **am**_ _an old man."_

Zelda blinked and then mentally swore. At the age of thirty-six, JT was the oldest pilot in their entire fighter group, which was something Zelda had forgotten in the heat of the moment.

"Yeah, well, you don't have to do your best to reinforce that fact," Zelda lamely retorted.

" _Oh, come on: lay off him, man,"_ JT's wing mate, Omega-9, suddenly interjected. _"He's doing fine. Not everyone can be as good as you or Odessa."_

"Hey! 303. I don't remember asking you a damn thing," Zelda retorted, then paused. "And what you _mean_ as good as me _and_ Odessa? We all know I'm a _much_ better pilot than Odessa is."

" _Uh huh. Sure…"_ 303 dragged out.

"Oh, fuck you," Zelda said with an annoyed sigh. He suddenly heard Odessa laughing over the radio. "What."

" _Typical Zelda: always got to pick a fight with everybody,"_ he mocked. _"What were you humming for anyways?"_

"What, I can't enjoy myself now?"

" _What's there to enjoy right now?"_

"What _isn't_ there to enjoy?" Zelda retorted. "We're all alive and healthy, we're flying, the weather is great…"

" _Wow,"_ Odessa dryly scoffed. _"If you consider this 'great' weather, I hate to see what you consider 'bad weather.'"_

Zelda glance out his window and had to admit, Odessa had a point. Currently it was very cloud and over casted; while it hadn't snowed just yet, it was threatening to at some point during the course of the day. To put it bluntly, it was not exactly Zelda's kind of weather.

"Okay, so maybe the weather's not _that_ great," Zelda allowed. "But, hey! Mother always told me to enjoy what I do."

" _Even if what you do involves killing people?"_ Odessa jeered.

"Well… it's not like the Covenant are actually _people…_ "

" _Actually…"_ Skeeter, Omega-12, suddenly interjected. _"If we define 'people' merely as a group of beings belonging to a particular race or species… then the Covenant technically_ _ **are**_ _people."_

Zelda didn't bother hiding his groan.

"Oh, fuck off Skeeter. No one gives a shit about 'technicalities,'" he growled.

" _Yeah,"_ he heard JT agreeing. _"I'm with Zelda on this one – which, by the way, is a statement I_ _ **never**_ _thought I would ever seriously say - there's no way Covenant are people. Not after the shit they've been doing for the last two decades."_

" _Fortunately, the English language doesn't care what_ _ **you**_ _think JT,"_ Skeeter retorted. _"The Covenant have a religion, a culture, and can think for themselves. Ergo, they have souls. Ergo, they are people. What they have done or haven't done doesn't change that."_

" _You only say that because you've never had to fight the Covies on the ground,"_ JT angrily snapped. _"_ _ **I**_ _have. And trust me, if you could see firsthand the things the Covies have done, you'd be singing a different tone."_

Zelda couldn't help but start to grin to himself: he loved it when his squadron mates started gang piling on each other as opposed to him.

But before the growing argument could continue, there was a soft _pop_ noise as the radio frequency was taken over by Omega Leader.

" _As much as I enjoy listening to my pilots having a spirited philosophical debate,"_ Bellum began with a hint of sarcasm, _"let's shelve it for now. We're about thirty seconds from reaching Waypoint Dog where Organ is supposed to tell us whether the operation is still a go or not; I suspect it is, so let's focus up. All Omega Flight pilots, sound off in sequence."_

" _This is Omega-3,"_ JT immediately said. _"Check."_

" _Omega-5, reporting in,"_ Odessa calmly stated. Zelda reached for his radio.

"Yeah, Omega-6: I'm here," he reported with a yawn.

" _Omega-9, standing by,"_ 303 announced.

" _This is Omega-12: reporting in,"_ Skeeter pompously announced.

" _This is Omega Leader: all Omega Flight pilots standing by,"_ Bellum finished. _"Alright, hang tight: should be hearing from the AWACS any moment now."_

Then, as if on cue: _"Attention all aircraft, this is Organ Leader: Operation Heavy Rain is a go. I say again, Operation Heavy Rain is a go."_

Zelda silently nodded to himself but internally, he was cheering: Operation Heavy Rain was the designation for the Air Force's part in Operation: SUDDEN PURGE II.

" _All aircraft,"_ Organ Leader was saying in the meantime, _"divert to heading two nine seven and climb to bombing altitude. All squadrons, acknowledge."_

At that, a chorus of replies filled the radio.

" _Yellow Wing," "Cello and Violin Squadrons – " "-anker Squadron acknowledges."_

" _This is Omega Flight: solid copy,"_ Zelda heard Bellum declare in a firm voice.

" _Copy that, all squadrons acknowledge,"_ Organ declared. _"All squadrons, begin advancing to bombing altitude by waves… now."_

Zelda looked forward as the aircraft flying ahead of him began to do just that. At the moment and for the last forty minutes, the entire formation had been flying at a little less than a hundred meters over the Euxine Ocean as they traveled in a northwestern direction from the airbase to Byzas. They had been flying this low, both to minimize their radar signature – thereby preventing Covenant search radars from picking up on their approach until the last second – as well to minimize the chances of them being detected by the Covenant fleet sitting in orbit. However, attempting to bomb at that altitude would of course be suicide, therefore once the formation had gotten close enough to where stealth no longer mattered, they were to climb to an altitude of about nine to ten thousand meters.

Which is what they were doing now.

Given that each wave was spaced roughly a thousand meters apart to avoid mid-air collisions, the Wombats that made up the first wave were way outside of Zelda's visual range. However, looking forward, he could see the blue flares from the engines of the Shortsword bombers that made up the third wave in front as they ignited their afterburners and began their ascent skyward. Watching them, he knew it wouldn't be long before it was his turn, and he quickly took one last look around him.

To his left, were the other Broadswords of his squadron. To the right, he spotted two ships from the Actium Navy in the distance – his HUD flagged them as the ANS _Serenity_ and the ANS _Firefly._ Even as he watched, a cloud of smoke suddenly blossomed from the deck of the _Serenity_ as she fired a series of missiles in the direction Byzas. The Navy attempting to steal some of the Air Force's glory? Zelda didn't know but at any case, glancing behind him, he could see no one else, and he suddenly felt quite lonely.

That feeling didn't last though as Bellum abruptly called out, _"Omega Flight! Follow me up!"_

Looking forward, Zelda watched as Bellum ignited her afterburners and began rapidly climbing, and he quickly followed suit.

His Broadsword began vibrating as they quickly gained altitude. They weren't climbing nearly as fast as they could – they didn't want to accidently overshoot the Shortswords, after all – but they were going fast enough Zelda could feel it, therefore it came as some relief when Bellum abruptly leveled out.

" _Wombats are engaging,"_ she reported without preamble. _"No signs of resistance from the Covenant. Might be saving it for us though, so keep sharp."_

"Copy," Zelda absentmindedly said into his microphone, before looking around.

At nine thousand meters above sea level, they were far above the clouds which Zelda could no longer see what was happening in the ground. All he could see were his fellow Broadswords on either side of him, and the Shortsword bombers in front of him, all of which he had seen a million times so they didn't interest him. Instead, he sat there and listened on the radio as reports from the first few waves came flying through.

" _Longswords are engaging,"_ Bellum reported. _"Again, no sign of resistance."_

Zelda frowned to himself. He couldn't figure out if the lack of resistance was a good thing or a bad thing. If the ground pounders had done their job correctly, then it made sense there would be no ground fire. However, the lack of enemy Banshees was interesting. Did the Covenant somehow lose all their airframes yesterday? Or were they just saving them for future battles? Or perhaps they were waiting for a target worth engaging like, say, a bunch of heavily laden bombers about to pass over the city?

Zelda had no idea, but he figured he was about to find out as, over the radio, he heard one of the Shortsword pilots get on.

" _All call signs, this is Cello Actual,"_ the man declared. _"We've reached the target area, and standing by to engage. All Cello and Violin bombers, open bomb bay doors."_

Zelda looked forward and watched as, in the distance, the underside bay doors to all the Shortswords slid open.

" _Target acquired… and… all pilots, engage! Bombs away, bombs away, bombs away."_

Zelda watched as several massive metal cylinders came tumbling out of each bomber and instantly begin heading down to the ground. He obviously couldn't hear them, but his brain immediately filled in the whistling noise they generated as they fell to the earth. The sight of nearly three hundred bombs simultaneously dropping towards the city reminded Zelda of the holovids he had seen in school, of all the Allied B-17s and Lancasters laying down the hate in Nazi Germany, only the bombs he was watching now were all precision guided munitions so with their GPS coordinates locked in, instead of just falling, all of the bombs began to separate as they headed straight for their individual targets. Seconds later, the clouds below them began to light up.

 _boom. boomboomboom._

Such was the explosive power stored in those bombs that even this high up, Zelda could _feel_ the shockwave.

 _ **KABOOM!**_

Without warning, there was a giant blue flash and the clouds parted for half a second to reveal a massive electric-blue fireball raising up from the surface.

"Well, _that_ hit something!" Zelda crowed as everyone else exploded into cheers. "Now that's what I call a dead Covie. _FUCK YEAH!"_

Fortunately, Bellum was a bit more focused than everyone else.

" _Omega Flight Leader to Organ: any sign of enemy Banshees?"_ she asked, causing Zelda to instantly sober up.

" _Negative Omega, we're not picking up anything,"_ Organ reported. _"You're cleared hot to engage."_

" _Copy. Rolling in, break. Omega Leader to all Omega pilots: you heard the man. Arm all weapons and standby to follow me in."_

Zelda reached out and flicked a series of switches to arm his FAE and cluster munitions as, ahead of him, the Shortswords quickly shut their bomb bay doors as they finished their bombing run and moved to clear the area for the following Broadswords. Having been assured there was no opposition to be worried about, Zelda went ahead and activated his TADS and began searching the ground for his assigned targets. The city had been set ablaze – though whether that was the result of the Army and Marine artillery bombardment, the Navy cruise missile strikes, or the Air Force bombing run, Zelda had no idea – sending massive plumes of smoke into the air, but fortunately he was able to lock onto the places he needed to hit. Without looking, he reached for his ordnance release lever and disabled the safety.

" _Organ Leader to Delta Wave: abort. I say again: abort!"_

Zelda's heart immediately jumped to his throat and he snapped his head up to search for the incoming threats, even as he heard Bellum acknowledging the order.

" _Organ Leader, this is Bayonet Leader: all Broadswords are aborting their run. What's the sitrep, over?"_

The concerned voice of Lieutenant Colonel Juan "Birddog" Yaipan, the temporary commander of all Broadswords for this operation, filled Zelda's ears.

" _Bayonet, Organ: be advised, we're actually not seeing any more targets worth hitting down there. Looks like Cello and Violin Squadrons have achieved nearly a hundred percent 'good effect' on target. So, rather than waste ordnance on a bunch of rumble, we're diverting your wave south to hit Covenant positions there, over."_

Zelda let out a sigh of relief. Good: they aborting because they were shifting targets was all. Not because of enemy Banshees. Or worse: their attack had been scrubbed.

" _Flanker and Hornet Squadrons, turn to heading one five oh. Bayonet and Omega, turn to heading two three two."_

" _Copy,"_ Bellum replied. _"Break. Alright guys, we're leaving the city behind. Come on."_

Disarmed his bombs for the moment, Zelda turned and headed towards the southern edge of the city. As he did, his HUD let out a small chime.

" _Organ to all Broadswords: you should have just received updated targeting grid coordinates. All Broadswords, confirm recipient of new grids, over."_

Zelda glanced at his HUD. Sure enough, new coordinates had been established. Plugging them into his computer, he tapped his mic. "Omega-6 confirms."

As everyone else began to confirm, he glanced at his TADS to see where they were. They were now through the edge and fast approaching the edge of what was being considered the "Southern Front." From where he was at, he couldn't see what he was supposed to be hitting, but he supposed it made sense: the Covenant, after all, would have made sure to camouflage their positions in order to make it harder for the UNSC to target them. Zelda could only hope the AWACS knew what they were doing.

" _Coming up to the release point,"_ Bellum called out and Zelda reached for his release lever once more. _"Standby… engage!"_

"Bombs away, bombs always, bombs away!" Zelda called out as he yanked on his release and watched with satisfaction as all of his bombs made a clean separation from his bird.

Closing his bomb doors, Zelda hurriedly accelerated to clear the area, but even as he did, he kept an eye on his TADS as the bombs got closer and closer to the ground then –

 _ **WABOOM!**_

He could see a visible bubble of air expanding through the air as his bombs – specifically the FAE ones – exploded in a furious explosion, instantly turning much of the snow and ice on the ground to steam, as well as setting ablaze anything left in the area.

"Ha-ha!" Zelda cheered.

" _Bayonet to Organ: all ordnance expended, we are Winchester on munitions. Requesting permission to return to base, over?"_

" _Granted. All Broadswords, RTB for refueling and rearmament."_

" _Wilco. Bayonet, out."_

" _Alright guys,"_ Bellum called out as soon as Birddog fell silent. _"RTB, RTB. Good work."_

Zelda felt a wide grin gracing his face as he turned his fighter in the direction of the airbase. Today was turning out to be a good day: he got to fly _and_ blow up a bunch of fucking aliens. What more could a warrior like him ask for?

As he passed over friendly positions, he glanced at his TADS to see a large amount of armored vehicles were beginning to advance across no man's land. Even though there was no way for them to see him, Zelda reached up and gave them a quick salute. The Air Force had done their job.

Now it was up to the ground pounders to bring it home.

* * *

1\. **Rock Ape:** this is actually a British Royal Air Force nickname for members of the RAF Regiment, which is the RAF equivalent of the USAF Security Forces (or rather, I should say the USAF SFs are the American equivalent of the RAF Regiment as the RAF Regiment was founded first.)

2\. **Glasshouse:** as implied by its usage in the chapter, this is a slang term for a military prison. It is, however, a _British_ military term, not an American.

Going back to what I mentioned back in my author's notes for chapter 40, I'm trying to add a bit more of an international flavor to this story, and the British seemed the easiest to implement first.

3\. **Sleipnir:** Sleipnir is actually the name of Odin's eight-legged horse from Norse mythology. In my headcanon, I'm going to treat it like it's the name of some sort of horse-like alien native to the Kig-Yar home world; seeing as how I already started dabbing into Norse mythology for alien names (see chapter 19,) I figured I might as well stay consistent.


	43. Chapter 42

This chapter was originally two chapters, however I decided to consolidate and remove an entire perspective as it didn't really add anything to the overall story, and it was kind of redundant. Hence why it's so long.

* * *

 **Chapter 42**

 **Town of Newington, Thracia Province  
May 7, 2545  
0646**

 **Tariq**

 _ **Boom. Boom. KABOOM!**_

Tariq reflexively looked up as, over the sound of the explosions in the distance, he managed to pick up on the roar of fighter jets passing by overhead. He couldn't see them, obviously, as even if he wasn't stuck inside a large metal box, the jets would have been flying over the heavy bank of clouds that blanketed the entire field. Nevertheless, he still tried to look.

Over the radio, he could hear some of the younger members of the battalion cheering as they watched the massive fireballs and clouds of dust and debris rise up over the Covenants as a result of the bombs the Air Force had just dropped, but he resisted the urge to join them. Instead, he bounced his foot impatiently against the floor of the turret as he tore his eyes from the ceiling and began glancing at the area around him, looking for signs of movement.

"We should be moving, we should be moving… why aren't we moving?" he impatiently muttered under his breath. "Goddammit! First Sergeant, what's the fucking hold up!?"

He glanced over his shoulder in Noble's direction, only to see her look up from the three separate radios she was currently juggling.

"I'm working on figure out the answer to that question right now," she irritably replied. "Hang on, Sergeant."

Tariq hastily sealed his mouth as Noble returned to her radios. Shit. What the fuck was causing the delay!?

Glancing forward once more, he could see the fireballs had already extinguished themselves, and all the debris was beginning to settle. Shit, this wasn't good – they should have been halfway across the field by now!

He looked back again as he heard Noble toss one of the radios aside.

"Fucking idiots," he heard her mutter. "Alright, here's the deal: someone up high is apparently worried about our general lack of infantry support, so they're moving up a battalion of motorized infantry from 80 Rifle to reinforce us in this advance."

Tariq stared at her. "Who the fuck made that decision? And why the fuck are they getting moved _now_ instead of during the artillery or airstrikes?"

Noble snorted and tossed her hands in the air.

"Who the fuck knows," she groaned before suddenly lifting her index finger. "Hang on, Sergeant: I've got Captain Lightfoot in my other ear. Go for 07!"

Tariq looked away, annoyed, though he did his best to try and avoid directing any of that in Noble's direction; it was pretty clear she had no control over this entire FUBAR of a situation, after all.

"Hey Sergeant? I don't think I'm following: if the Covenant are all dead, then why does it matter if we move out now or five minutes from now?"

Tariq glanced towards the front of the tank's cabin at Corona's question.

"Jesus Christ, you really are some kind of special stupid, aren't you?" he snapped before he could stop himself. Fortunately, Noble was still too busy with the radio to notice. "Unfortunately, the same can't be said about the Covenant, otherwise this war would be going far better than it actually is."

To Tariq's mild irritation, Corona didn't even raise to the bait. Instead, he just stared at Tariq as he patiently waited for Tariq to finish his rant.

Tariq merely rolled his eyes.

"We'll be lucky if that artillery or airstrike even killed a single Covenant soldier," Tariq explained, "as it wasn't intended to. The point behind the strikes was to force the Covenant away from their guns and into cover long enough for _us_ to get in close. But in order for us to get in close, we need to move _right now_ while the Covenant are still struggling to recover from their shock."

"Fortunately, battalion commander would appear to agree with you Sergeant," Noble interjected as she tossed her radio aside. "Order is 'fuck everybody else, move out now.' So, Driver, let's move it out!"

Tariq was mildly impressed. That was strangely decisive for their battalion commander.

He braced himself as Corona immediately threw Lillian into gear and began surging forward. As they started rolling across the field, Tariq leaned back.

"That being said, First Sergeant," he said in a low voice, "we shouldn't be advancing without infantry support."

"We got the Armadillo IFVs from Dragoon backing us up, a couple of M875 EBVs in front of us, as well as a few Sun Devil SPAAGs supporting us. We should be fine, at least until the reinforced battalion from 80 Rifle decides to catch up to us," Noble stated, then paused.

"At least, that's what Lightfoot tells me," she added, sounding just a bit more uncertain of herself.

Tariq just grunted in response. As long as everyone was all on the same page.

He turned his attention back forward as Corona cleared the last of the outposts that made up the outer edge of the UNSC's MLR, and started crossing no-man's land in the direction of the Covenant at a relatively brisk pace.

"Driver, make sure to maintain the integrity of the line," Noble demanded. "Don't drive too fast or too slow; also, keep your spacing and don't bunch up."

"Copy," Corona replied, his voice strained with concentration.

"Gunner, watch our objective and watch out for fuel rod teams," Noble continued. "I'm going up top."

Tariq threw a wave in her direction, but he didn't look away from his sights. Behind him, he could hear Noble popping open her hatch, which also allowed him to hear the screaming of rocket artillery as they passed by overhead and landed roughly about where Tariq and his battalion were advancing towards.

He frowned to himself. That wasn't part of the plan: those rockets were supposed to be hitting just behind the Covenant MLR, to try and prevent the Covenant from pushing up reinforcements. What were they doing hitting the objective? Did the redlegs somehow screw up their targeting coordinates? Or did Division decide to shift targets and hit the objective instead, in order to continue suppressing the Covenant long enough for the vanguard of the UNSC attack to reach them?

Whatever the case was, it was a change in the pre-established plan, and if there was one thing Tariq absolutely hated, it was last minute changes.

At the same time, it wasn't like there was anything Tariq could do about it…

" _All units, this is Actual."_

Lightfoot's voice suddenly sounded over the radio, cutting through Tariq's thoughts.

" _Looks like someone has decided to divert the artillery to support our advance, so all gunners, hold your fire until we get within five hundred meters of the objective, or you've got a PID on something, over,"_ he commanded.

" _Gunner!"_ Noble immediately called out over the intercom. _"You copy that?"_

"Copy, First Sergeant!" Tariq yelled back, then turned his attention back forward towards the objective as the radio started to fill with low-level chatter from the other vehicles.

The area they were advancing towards – designated Objective "Cobalt" for this operation – was a small wooded area sitting on top of a small hill called "Backwater Creek" because of the small creek that ran through the center. According to intel, the Covenant had established an observation post at the top yesterday, and as part of Operation: SUDDEN PURGE II, Tariq and his battalion had been ordered to take it.

Tactically speaking, the objective wasn't worth a damn. The woods surrounding Backwater Creek was nowhere near as large or as thick as the forest Tariq and his comrades had assault this morning – meaning there weren't a lot of places for the Covenant to hide – nor was the creek itself all that deep or wide to act as an obstacle. Strategically speaking, however, was another story: as the hill was surrounded on all sides by open fields, Backwater Creek served as a perfect observation point over all major roads leading to and from Byzas.

Essentially, if an army wanted to control the major roads leading to Byzas, they had to control the town of Newington. However, if they wanted to make sure their convoys weren't harassed by IDF or snipers, then Backwater Creek needed to be taken.

" _Gunner, maintain observation of the objective area,"_ Noble suddenly said over the groaning of the tank as it drove over the small bumps and holes that covered the field. _"You see anything, call it out so everyone can be aware of it."_

"Yeah, yeah, I got it First Sergeant," Tariq replied somewhat impatiently, and couldn't help but add, "You know, First Sergeant, this isn't exactly my first assault on a defended Covenant position."

Noble ignored him.

" _1-1, this is 07,"_ she said instead. _"You're drifting. Don't draw attention to yourself by being the lead tank. Hold back just a bit."_

" _Copy that 07. Hey! 2-2 and Taipan 1-3, spread the fuck out! Don't cluster up like that, you'll make yourself a prime target."_

" _Got it. Yeah, that's 2-2's fault, sorry. We were trying to avoid driving into some sort of crater; don't want to accidently get stuck."_

" _Yeah, well, try and maintain your dispersion, understood?"_

" _Cataphract Actual, this is 3-1. Interrogative: have we lost comms with CAS, over?"_

" _3-1, this is 07,"_ Noble interjected. _"Negative. I'm still up, over."_

" _Copy that 07. Actual, be advised, 3-1 has a downed comm link. I say again, 3-1 has no comms with CAS, over."_

" _Solid copy, 3-1,"_ Lightfoot smoothly replied. _"You've clearly got comms with the rest of the company, so stay as close as you can to 07 without breaking dispersion; any targets you see, relay to 07 who'll call it in, over."_

" _Understood. 3-1, out."_

" _Actual to all call signs: sitrep on the target area. Anyone see any movement, over?"_

" _Negative."_

" _Actual, we have, uh, zero contact at the objective area."_

" _There is no sign of movement, over."_

" _Man, how have the Covies not react to our presence yet,"_ a voice unknown to Tariq exclaimed. _"Hinge-heads have to be blind, deaf,_ _ **and**_ _dumb not to have noticed us coming."_

" _Bowman 1-2, keep this net clear of all non-essential communiques,"_ Lightfoot snapped. _"Actual to all call signs: maintain observation of the target area, and report any signs of activities."_

" _Copy that Actual."_

" _Understood."_

" _Gunner!"_ Noble yelled into the intercom, which was being fed into Tariq's other ear. _"You see anything?"_

Tariq carefully scanned the hill in front of them. Unfortunately, despite the multitude of optical and sensors this tank was equipped with, Tariq found it nearly impossible to see anything – with the coming dawn, it was rapidly becoming too bright for night vision to be all that useful at this range and there appeared to still be quite a lot of heat residue remaining from all the bombs and shells that had already been dropped on the Covenant, meaning thermals were out too. Tariq was pretty much down to magnified optics and his standard pair of mark one eyeballs.

"I got absolutely nothing, First Sergeant," Tariq reported.

"Maybe we did get them all after all," Corona piped up from his station. "Maybe – "

"Don't fucking finish that sentence!" Tariq immediately snapped. " _Every time_ someone says something fucking stupid like that, all hell breaks loose moments later. So don't fucking jinx us."

Out of the corner of his eye, Tariq could see Corona giving an apologetic wave, but Tariq had a feeling it was already too late. Slowly sweeping his gun sights left and right, he paused when he spotted a small flash of light.

"INCOMING!"

 _ **PSSHHHHHHHHH!**_

The radioactive green fuel rod stream was ninety percent of the way across the field before the first syllable had evened fully left Tariq's mouth. The stream came streaking straight towards them, but just as it was about to hit, by sheer coincidence, Corona accidently drove into a small depression in the ground, causing the stream to miss hitting the turret by mere centimeters.

"HOLY SHIT!" Noble yelped as she ducked back inside. "Contact, CONTACT!"

At the same time, the entire field was lit up with green light as the Covenant promptly opened up with everything they had. Streams from plasma assault guns, fuel rod cannons, concussion rifles, and even small arms fire began raining down all around the advancing UNSC forces.

 _ **BSHHHHHH! BSHHHHH!**_

A stream of plasma sliced up the ground right next to the tank, leaving a nasty looking gash behind as well as causing all the snow and ice to instant turn to steam. Meanwhile, somewhere to Tariq's left, he spotted a fuel rod cannon projectile ricocheting off the right side skirt of one of their supporting EBVs and disappearing somewhere up into the air. At the same time, he felt the entire tank rock as something exploded behind them, and he didn't even need to look back to recognize the telltale signs of a vehicle taking a direct hit.

" _CONTACT!"_ someone was screaming over the radio. _"Multiple Covenant launchers, on the ridge!"_

" _1-1 to Actual, be advised Bowman 1-3 is down, I say again, Bowman 1-3 is down,_ _ **hard!"**_

" _Cataphract Actual to all UNSC call signs on this net: we have been engaged!"_

"Gunner! Give me a target!" Noble was screaming from behind him.

Tariq had been trying to do just that.

"Target: enemy assault cannon, eight eight zero meters, one three degrees left!" Tariq started to say as he spotted a muzzle flash, but before the words could even fully leave his mouth –

"Fire, FIRE! Gunner, you're free to engage all targets on the hill!"

"On the way!" Tariq roared as he pulled the trigger.

 _Boom! Klunk-klunk!_

Tariq felt the entire tank shake as one of his cannons recoiled, sending a HEAT shell screaming into the direction of the Covenant. He could see the shell explode, sending a plume of smoke into the air, but he couldn't tell if he actually hit anything as his attention was drawn to a fuel rod cannon headed direction for them.

"INCOMING, DIRECT FRONT!"

Tariq was thrusted against his harness as Corona abruptly slammed on the brakes. The fuel rod cannon, which had been lead so that Lillian would have driven into it, instead fell short and exploded a few meters in front of the vehicle, showering them with dirt.

" _Contact! Eight three zero meters, zero five degrees right!"_

Tariq glanced over to his right to see Cataphract 3-1 firing both their barrels in rapid succession, and he glanced downrange in time to see both shells exploding.

3-1 followed up their initial barrage with a long burst of machine gun fire, and as their rounds streaked over the hill, Tariq was able to spot a mounted assault cannon positioned directly under a fallen tree as it was briefly illuminated by the tracers.

He quickly brought his turret around.

"On the way!" he yelled in warning, before firing.

 _Boom! Klunk-klunk!_

His second barrel recoiled. This cannon had been loaded with a canister shell, which smashed straight into the tree truck and turning it into splinters, exposing the assault cannon for all to see.

Quickly popping a HEAT shell into his first barrel, Tariq fired again. "On the way!"

This time a green flash accompanied the plume of dirt and Tariq could see a large chunk of something get hurtled into the air.

"Fuck you!" Tariq yelled, even as he panned his turret around and started looking for another target.

Unfortunately, the destruction of one anti-tank position was hardly enough to deter the Covenant, and even as Tariq searched for something else to shoot at, a fuel rod cannon exploded against the front of Lightfoot's tank, washing the entire vehicle in green electricity.

" _Actual, this is 07!"_ Noble immediately called out. _"Status, over?"_

" _Actual to all vehicles!"_ Lightfoot yelled, sounding pissed. _"You're weapons free! Suppressing fire! Light that fucking hill up!"_

Tariq instantly emptied both his barrels downrange, the recoil of which caused Lillian to jump, before following it up with an extended burst from his coax.

All around him, red-orange tracers were skipping all over the place, and the entire face of the hill was washed away with dirt as the entirety of the advancing UNSC force simply unloaded on the Covenant with everything they had: cannons, autocannons, heavy machine gun fire, and coaxial fire. At the same time, a series of rockets began striking the hill, and Tariq glanced skyward to see two SkyHawks from the Actium Air Force come flying in – clearly someone had call in close air support.

Abruptly, one of the SkyHawks fired a Scorpion anti-tank missile before both birds peeled away, and Tariq watched as the missile rocket down to earth. Microseconds later, there was a massive explosion from the Covenant's position, one that was bigger and even more spectacular than what Tariq had managed to accomplish a few moments ago.

In the face of so much return fire, the Covenant cannon fire began to visibly slacken. But it didn't end entirely…

There was a flash of orange from somewhat behind the tanks and at once, the radio exploded into chatter. Tariq tried to figure out what was going on, but there were too many people trying to talk at the same time, the radio was actually locking up. The only things Tariq could make out was: "Infantry support. Down."

Infantry support… _Chenko!_

Tariq's heart immediately leapt to his throat.

"FIRST SERGEANT!" he screamed. "FIRST SERGEANT! Which one of Dragoon's IFVs got hit?"

"What!?" Noble yelled as she ducked her head back inside and moved her mic away from her mouth.

"Which Armadillo got hit?" Tariq repeated a bit more slowly, though he didn't bother trying to hide his concern.

Noble gave him an odd look, before a look of comprehension appeared on her face. "None of them. It was a Wolverine half-track from the 80 Riffle battalion that was backing us up."

Tariq let out a sigh of relief. Chenko was alright.

His relief immediately turned to horror though, when he suddenly remembered that Wolverines were nowhere near as heavily armored as Grizzlies or even Armadillos were. And that aside from having a crew of two, they could also carry up to twelve fully equipped infantrymen in the rear. "How many crunchies made it out?"

The dark look that Noble gave him told Tariq everything he needed to know, and he shuttered. Fuck, now that was a bad way to go.

With fuel rods and plasma still pouring in, Tariq wasn't able to dwell on that thought for very long, and he turned his attention back to his station. While the Covenant fire had definitely slackened, his fellow tankers were still working on trying to eliminate, or at least silence, the remaining guns.

" _Right side, four hundred meters!"_ someone was saying. _"Need some to hit it with an HE or something."_

" _I think I got one suppressed! Follow my tracers!"_

" _Actual, this is 1-3: we're hit. Main optics have been destroyed, but we still got backups."_

"Jesus Christ!" Tariq swore. "How many fucking Covenant are up there!?"

" _No idea!"_ Noble provided. _"7th CAV sent a RSTA platoon over there last night to try and probe it, but they got repelled, hard. Lost two Bisons and had to scrap a third. Only intel we had on this hill was from recon flights from the Air Force."_

Tariq shook his head. Those were some bad conditions to be fighting a battle.

" _Lancer to all call signs: we're close enough to begging deploying infantry. All Cataphract and Hippeis tanks, hold position and begin laying down covering fire. All Taipan victors, advance to within three hundred meters and clear all obstacles. Dragoons: standby to deploy."_

" _Cataphract 07 copies,"_ Noble immediately affirmed. _"Driver, halt halt halt! Push forward about five meters; put us in that depression! Gunner: covering fire!"_

Tariq began systematically firing all of his available weapons in the direction of the Covenant as Corona positioned the tank in a small depression while Noble opened up with their RWS. The air in front of them suddenly became filled with all sorts of lead and tracers, and all incoming plasma fire abruptly ceased.

At the same time all that was going on, the EBVs belonging to Taipan began pushing forward until they were roughly three hundred meters from the edge of the Covenant positions before coming to a halt. Even as Tariq continued to fire, two panels on the back of each EBV began to lift up until they were pointed forward at a forty-five degree angle.

" _All call signs, this is Taipan Actual,"_ the commander of the engineering platoon reported. _"Preparing to fire mine clearing line charges in three, two, one… firing!"_

The loud howl of rockets filled the air as all four EBVs fired a total of eight MICLIC between them straight into the air, dragging along with them a nearly hundred meter long line of plastic explosives that extended all the way to the edge of the Covenant MLR.

" _Detonating charges in three, two, one…!"_

Tariq hastily slapped his hands over his ears.

Despite his precautions, Tariq could still feel the explosion deep in his soul as all eight changes went up. It was like the very surface of the colony had split apart – while battlefields in general were very loud places, nothing could quite match the roar of nearly twenty-five thousands kilograms worth of explosives going up simultaneously.

Despite this impressive display of fireworks, the explosives did little to no damage to the Covenant. But then again, they weren't supposed to. Instead, the MICLIC charges were designed to not only destroy all obstacles in their path, but also to remove any mines and IEDs the Covenant might have planted in front of their lines as part of their defense. With the way clear, it was now time for the infantry to come into play.

Tariq grabbed his controls and started firing again even as the EBVs lowered their mines plows and began making their way towards Objective Cobalt, with the remaining vehicles of Dragoon Company in tow. However, before the group could even go more than a few meters –

 _ **Boom.**_

An explosion ripped through the underside of the EBV closest to Tariq and his tank. Tariq didn't see what caused the explosion, but he did see all the bogie wheels and scraps of tank track that got sent scattering across the battlefield.

" _Fuck!"_ he heard the sappers yell. _"Cataphract, this is Taipan 1-2: be advised, we just took a hit to our front right track. Attempting to assess the damage… yeah, track is fucked. Cataphract, be advised: we've just been mobility killed."_

Tariq felt his heart sink at that, mostly because he had a feeling he knew what was coming next. Sure enough, Lightfoot didn't even hesitate.

" _06 to 07."_

He heard Noble lifting her radio. _"Go ahead."_

" _You still have that mine plow mounted, over?"_

" _A-firm."_

" _Good. Take Taipan 1-2's place."_

"Copy," Noble said as she lowered herself back inside and slammed her hatch shut. She glanced around the tank. "Alright guys, we're moving in with the infantry! Make sure we're all buttoned up and let's move out! Gunner, maintain suppression fire on the left, I'll cover the right. Driver, make sure you're plowing the path the sappers just made for us, and keep moving, no matter what. We're gonna have an entire platoon of mechanized infantry behind us, maybe more, and if stop for any reason, we all die."

"Understood, First Sergeant," Corona barked, sounding confident, but Tariq could see sweat pouring down his face.

"Get us into position, then deploy the plow!"

Switching fully to his coax, Tariq began spraying the area directly in front of them and to the left with machine gun, trying to do his best to keep the Covenant's head down. The only problem was, for this part of the operation, success would depend on not Tariq's gunnery skills, but Corona's driving ability; as Noble had pointed out, if Corona stopped or froze for any reason, then a lot of people were going to die.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tariq watched as Corona carefully maneuver Lillian around the crippled EBV, before dropping the mine plow mounted on the front of the tank. With the dirt having just been freshly overturned, the teeth of the plow cut through the dirt rather easily. Then, with a barely audible sigh, Corona threw the tank into gear and began advancing towards the Covenant.

As useful as MICLIC were, they unfortunately weren't perfect. Sometimes, instead of destroying mines or IEDs, they sometimes merely caused them to flip over. They were still very dangerous for any vehicle that rolled over them, which is why it was important for the area that just got exploded to still be plowed. Of course doing so usually left the plowing vehicle extremely vulnerable.

Tariq nervously continued to lay down covering fire on the left. He spotted a Grunt popped up out of nowhere, fuel rod cannon on its shoulder, but Tariq was able to blow the creature away before it could get a single shot off. However, for the most part, Tariq's attention was on Corona as he carefully made his way through the lane. This part was always tricky as there was only one direction to go: forward. Corona couldn't backup because if he did, he'd backup straight into the IFVs that were following them in, yet if he deviated from the path, there was a good chance he could not only get the mine plow stuck, but hit a mine. This was of course all taking place while the Covenant were shooting at them.

In Tariq's experience, some drivers simply couldn't handle that pressure. Fortunately, Corona didn't appear to be one of them as he continued to drive forward without hesitation, and only a slight grimace on his face that betrayed his tension. The tank shook as it took a shell to the side, but fortunately the plasma failed to penetrate.

"Alright Driver, hold!" Noble suddenly yelled. "All Dragoon units: begin deploying infantry and capture the objective!"

" _Wilco, deploying now!"_

Tariq glanced behind them as the Armadillos all pulled up to form a rough line alongside Lillian, before popping open their rear ramps. Infantry began pouring out like disturbed bees from a beehive, and threw themselves onto the ground just to the left of their respective IFVs where they promptly began adding their fire to the suppressive fire the rest of the attacking force had been maintaining up until this point. Tariq automatically looked around for Chenko, but this must have been a different platoon as Chenko was nowhere in sight.

" _Doughs on the ground!"_ the infantry platoon Leader reported. _"All units, advance!"_

Almost as one, the entire line of infantry and vehicles began pushing forward to fully clear Backwater Creek of all hostiles, but as they advanced, it became abundantly clear most of the Covenant hold position here were already dead. Blast craters, discarded weapons, and destroyed emplacements littered the area, and what few Covenant soldiers that remained quickly met their end via rifle rounds to the face or fragmentations from hand grenades.

Tariq spun his sights around to see if anyone needed his help, but with the amount of friendly infantry in the area, he decided it would be too dangerous to use any of the tank's weapons. Instead, he slouched down in his seat, content on letting the crunchies mop up.

Grabbing a nearby water bottle, Tariq wrenched it open and took a sip. This operation was barely an hour old, yet Tariq couldn't help but feel exhausted. With any luck, the fighting would end soon, and he could relax once more.

" _Lancer to all call signs on this net: be advised, Brigade is reporting the Air Force has picked up the signatures of multiple Covenant ground vehicles leaving the city and heading in our direction. Assume defensive positions, and be prepared to hold your ground!"_

Tariq immediately sat up at that. Grabbing his controls, he spun his turret around and pointed it in the direction of Byzas, before going max zoom. What he saw caused him to break out in a cold sweat: an entire battalion of Covenant Wraths and Hunters, supported by AA and Shadows, were leaving the city and headed in their direction.

"Driver! Put us in this position!" Noble demanded as a waypoint appeared on Tariq's HUD. "Gunner! Loaded up SABOTs and standby to engage at max range!"

As Corona spun the tank around and Noble scrambled out of her hatch to reload the RWS, Tariq realized he had been just a bit too optimistic: this battle was far from over. In fact –

\- it had apparently only just begun.

 **XXXXX**

" **Northern Front," Byzas  
May 7, 2545  
0655**

 **Adel**

The rumbling of explosions filled the air as Adel stared blankly downrange, idly fingering a hand grenade. As soon as the Air Force had finished passing over them, mortars from both the Army and the Marines had opened up, plastering the Covenant directly in front of the line of advance, trying to soften them up even further before the infantry began their advance. Which wouldn't happen until the Army armored units down in the south began _their_ attack, with the reason being: no one knew exactly how the Covenant were going to react to this attack. More than likely the Covenant would opt to hold their ground, but if they didn't… if they simply retreated en masse… then they could potentially run right over the forces in the south if they weren't ready.

Personally, Adel didn't mind waiting. It went without saying, but the more bombs and shells that were dropped on the Covenant, the better off he would be. While countless post-war studies had shown that artillery and aircraft were responsible for causing the vast majority of casualties among the enemy, neither system could win wars by themselves and ultimately, it would the be infantry and that had to go in and kill the rest.

That being said, it was a bit aggravating to have to sit here and wait…

Hooking his grenade back onto his webbing, Adel looked around. The frontline was packed with fully armed and equipped Soldiers and Marines, all waiting for the order to jump off. Occupying his building was of course the members of his team, Sam and X, but also their two new ammo bitches: Gale and Reznick. Aside from carrying four rockets apiece of the Jackhammer, they were also carrying their own personal weapons: an MA5C assault rifle with an under barrel M301 grenade launcher and an MA5B automatic rifle, respectively.

Back up the infantry were a number of armored vehicles, pulled from both the Corps and the Army. In this section of the line, their support would come in the form of one of the Army's M432 "Armadillo" infantry fighting vehicles, which a bit concerning for Adel; after all, not only did IFVs lack the armor and the firepower of an actual tank, but it was also crewed by the Army. And what the hell did the Army know about fighting?

Granted, they had done alright in the last day or so. But that was on the defense, and everyone knew while the Army occupied territory, it was the Marines who conducted all the offensive actions. So, if it was up to Adel, he would have much preferred having a Marine tanker back them up, as opposed to an Army one.

But of course, it wasn't up to him.

Without warning, Lieutenant Lancelot abruptly stood up, catching Adel's attention, as well as everyone else's in the area. Without saying a word, he gestured for everyone to get up, and it took Adel a minute to realize what was going on, just as he heard the sound of all mortars shifting their fire further downrange.

It was time.

 **xxx**

 **Zek**

"GET UP KIG-YAR!"

Zek immediately jerked awake as a heavy boot kicked him, and he looked around, confused. The last thing he remembered was taking shelter inside one of the human's drainage basins, in order to escape all the bombs the humans had been dropping on his position. Now, however, the large concrete slab that had been over his head protecting him was gone, and in its place stood –

\- two Sangheili: a Major and a _very_ irate looking Minor.

Zek jumped at the sight, but unfortunately before he could react, the Minor grabbed him and roughly yanked him out of his hole.

"I SAID GET UP!" the Minor roared and, stumbling to his feet, Zek glanced behind him in time to see both Rezan and Ziik receiving the same treatment he had gotten.

"What is happening?" Zek couldn't help but ask as he looked around the area.

This part of the city was a mess: entire buildings were gone, the ground was covered in craters, and mounds of debris lined the streets. It would appear as if the humans were satisfied with the destruction they had wrought, as while Zek could hear more explosions, they were further away.

"The cowardly humans have finally decided to test our mettle in glorious battle!" the Minor gleefully declared. "They advance on our position. But they shall soon find the Holy Warriors of the Light do not falter! Be thankful, Kig-Yar, for even a lesser being such as yourself will be able to achieve glory on this day!"

Despite the Sangheili's words, Zek found himself trembling with fear instead. He would have very much preferred _not_ to face the humans in combat.

He suddenly noticed the Minor staring at him with narrow eyes.

"Kig-Yar! Where is your weapon!?" the Minor abruptly demanded, and Zek jumped in surprise.

"Er… he stuttered, trying to remember what he had done with his rifle. Oh… right… "I lost it, sire!"

That apparently was the wrong thing to say, as Zek could see the Minor begin to glow with rage, and he mentally braced himself.

"You lost…! How _dare_ you lose a most holy weapon blessed by the Gods themselves...!" the Minor started to yell, but before he could finish, he was abruptly cut off.

"Minor, enough," the Major suddenly growled. "Deal with this cur later. At present, take your Lance, and await the heretics in _that_ building."

The Minor bowed deeply.

"As you command," the Minor said in a servile voice before scurrying off, leaving Zek and his comrades with the Major, which Zek couldn't decide whether was a good thing or not.

He turned to the Sangheili Major, half-afraid of what the Major might say or do, and did his best to avoid jumping as the Major abruptly drew his Type-25 plasma rifle. At first, Zek was almost convinced the Major was about to shoot him for whatever reason, but then, much to Zek's astonishment, the Major actually handed the weapon over to Zek.

"Take this," the Major demanded, however all Zek could do was stare dumbly at the weapon, as if it would suddenly come alive and bite him.

The Major noticed Zek's hesitation, and let out a low growl.

"You cannot fight the humans without a weapon, Kig-Yar, so take this!" he insisted and Zek hastily grabbed the rifle.

"Tha… thank you, sire?" Zek said as he awkwardly held the rifle in hand. He wasn't sure how he should react; he had never seen a Sangheili offer their weapon to a 'lesser race,' ever.

The Major merely grunted in response as he pulled a Type-50 concussion rifle from his back.

"Lose another weapon, Kig-Yar, and you shall lose your head," he warned and before Zek could react, turned to Rezan and Ziik standing silently nearby. "All of you Kig-Yar are now under _my_ command. Ready your weapons, and prepare for battle!"

Without another word, the Major took off down the street in the direction of the approaching humans…

 **xxx**

 **Adel**

The sound of mortar fire screaming overhead continued to echo through the streets, however it was clear they were landing further and further away as all UNSC forces advanced down the street towards the Covenant. So far they hadn't encountered any Covenant, only bodies, but everyone knew it would only be a matter of time.

As Adel wearily walked down the street, he couldn't help but marvel at all the destruction both the artillery and the bombers had done to the city so far. Entire buildings had been reduced to rubble, deep craters pocketed the street, and abandoned vehicles had been strewn around all over the place like a giant baby had picked them up and tossed them. Adel had never seen such devastation before, and in some ways, it made him a bit jealous: he could never replicate this amount of chaos, not in a million years. It almost made his wished he'd been an artillery man or even an air winger instead.

Still, infantry life was where it was at, and he wouldn't give it up for nothing, even if they end up finding themselves in some pretty shitty situations. Because as impressive as the damage was, Adel knew along with everyone else in the battalion, there was no way all the Covenant were dead. So, he tightly gripped his rifle and wearily scanned the buildings that surrounded them.

At the moment, the mishmash company of UNSC personnel Adel had found himself with were simultaneously advancing down the street on both sides. Every single person was spaced roughly three to four meters apart. Both Sam and X were in front of him, while their two reservist were behind him. Lieutenant Lancelot led the way, from the very front of the column, whereas their Armadillo IFV support was some twenty meters behind them, following up the rear.

It was quiet. Aside from the soft clattering of rubble against the asphalt, as well as the shrieking of the Armadillo's tracks, no one said a word. Everyone knew they were potentially walking into an ambush, the real question was: when would it be sprung, and in what form would it appear?

Adel kind of wished they were moving between buildings instead of down the street in the open, but unfortunately with as many buildings destroyed, it meant that would have been impossible. The good thing about being on the street meant it would be easier for the Marines to spot incoming hostiles. However, conversely, it would be far easier for the Covenant to spot _them._ Unfortunately, what other choice did they have?

As Adel nervously flicked the safety off his battle rifle, he apprehensively scanned the rooftops.

For some reason, he just couldn't shake that feeling like he was being watched.

 **xxx**

 **Zek**

Zek slowly lifted his borrowed rifle up as he cautiously took aim. Watching the approaching humans from the relative safety of the building the Sangheili Major had directed him and his comrades in, Zek couldn't help but feel a thrill of adrenaline and excitement. Zek was hardly the most fanatical of Kig-Yar, but even he couldn't deny there was some sort of perverse pleasure to be derived from killing unholy heretics who dared spurn the gentle and guiding hand of the Prophets.

However, Zek's excitement was tempered by the realization that the next few moments would require a great deal of concentration on his part, and that in order for victory to be secured, it would require strong discipline for all warriors involved. The Major's plan for ambushing the humans was cunning, but complex, and Zek was determined not to be the one who ruined it. Not only because in doing so would result in his immediate execution, but should this plan of the Major's fail, then it could result in a victory for the humans. And that could not be allowed.

Out of the corner of his eye, Zek spotted a couple of Unggoy on the street level, scurrying around in shadow of the building. Even as he watched, they readied a Type-33 anti-armor weapon and pointed in the direction of the advancing human Shadow.

All Covenant warriors were now in position. Now all they needed was for the humans to get just a bit closer…

 **xxx**

 **Adel**

Lancelot suddenly held up a closed fist, and Adel instantly dropped down to one knee behind the nearest bit of cover, along with everyone else. He brought his rifle up and began scanning the area that surrounded him, trying to not only spot any hostiles, but hear them.

Unfortunately, between the mortars exploding in the distance, the mute clattering of falling debris as a result of said explosions, and his own rapidly beating heart, Adel found it rather difficult to concentrate. Nevertheless, he forced himself too as, not only was his life on the line, so too were all of his friends.

The seconds began ticking by and Adel did his best to remain calm, least he accidently do something stupid. In front of him, he could hear X nervously drumming his fingers against the hand guard of his rifle, while one of the reservist behind him seemed to be praying. Then –

" _Viking 3-3, this Warhammer-1 Actual,"_ Adel heard Lancelot whisper over the radio, and he automatically glanced back at the Armadillo who was being addressed. _"Anything on your sensors?"_

There was a slight whine of hydraulics, and Adel could see not only the turret panning back and forward, but also the commander's independent sight as the crew scanned the street for Covenant.

" _Negative, Warhammer,"_ the Armadillo finally replied. _"Our scopes are clear."_

" _Copy,_ " Lancelot quietly replied.

Looking in his direction, Adel could see Lancelot glancing over his shoulder at his waiting men. Without a word, he gestured for everyone to advance.

Grunting slightly due to the weight of his assault pack, Adel staggered to his feet and –

 **xxx**

 **Zek**

Zek did his best to try and hold his breath as all of the humans suddenly stopped moving and dropped to their knees. Did the humans detect them? But how? No one in the Lance had moved, and with the explosions in the distance, it would be impossible for the humans to have heard them.

For the next few heartbeats, neither side moved a muscle. Instead, all forces involved remained where they were, watching to see who would making the first move.

As Zek stood there, rifle wavering ever so slightly in his trembling talons, he resisted the urge to wipe at his mouth, least he inadvertently reveal his position with his movement. In an effort to distract himself, he glanced down the street, only to see the human Shadow vehicle moving its turret around, as if searching for the Covenant forces.

Fortunately, the vehicle didn't appear to see them, as it slowly returned to its original position, and Zek mutely let out a sigh of relief. However, his ease did not last long because, almost immediately, he felt the Major tense up beside him. Then, he heard the Major say two words over the communications that would seal the fate of the humans for the next coming days:

"Unggoy: engage."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the two Unggoy from before abruptly stand up.

"BIG BOO – "

 _ **BSSSHHHHHHH –**_

 **xxx**

 **Adel**

 _ **\- HHHHHHH!**_

A rocket encased in green light shot down the street and slammed into the Armadillo and exploded, sending melting globs of plasma and burning shards of metal in all directions! At the same time, all hell seemed to break loose as the very air seemed to ignite as a rainbow of lights, almost all traveling faster than the eye could track, streak through the air and begin raining down on the UNSC forces, seemingly from all directions!

 _ **FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ!**_

Almost immediately people began dropping left and right. A purple needler ricochet off Adel's left pauldron while at the same time, one of the Army Soldiers standing on the other side of the street took a blue plasma bolt straight to the face and dropped like a stone.

" _CONTACT!"_ someone screamed while at the same time someone else was screaming, "DOWN DOWN DOWN!"

"INCOMING PLASMA FIRE, TAKE COVER!" Adel heard Sam holler, but Adel was hours ahead of him as he hurtled himself onto the ground.

"ENEMY CONTACT – "

" - WHERE'S THE FUCKING FIRE COMING FROM – "

" _ON THE ROOF, THEY'RE ON THE RO- "_

"GRENADE!"

Adel covered his head with his arms as the telltale sound of a plasma grenade going off filled his ears, instantly turning one poor soul into minced meat. Needler fire shattered against the pavement, throwing crystal shards against flesh, some of which actually stuck.

" _SHOOT BACK, SHOOT!"_

" – FUCKING HEADS DOWN, GET DOWN YOU – "

" _INCOMING – "_

 _ **BSSSSHHHHH!**_

Another fuel rod cannon came scream down the street and detonated somewhere among the Soldiers holding position behind him, but Adel didn't bother trying to see how many had just become casualties because with a loud war cry, Adel snapped his rifle up and began unloading in the direction the fuel rod had come from.

 _BAMBAMBAMBAM!_

Adel had no idea if he hit anything because he couldn't actually see any targets, but judging on the amount of plasma suddenly thrown his way, he figured he must have. Abandoning his firing position, Adel threw himself back onto the ground as his position was suddenly saturated with all sorts of small arms fire.

 _ **FWOOZFWOOZ SPLAT!**_

"AHHHH!"

Someone began screaming behind Adel and he looked back to see some militiaman he didn't recognize writhing in the ground behind him. Where the man had come from as he hadn't been there a moment ago, Adel had no idea, but he grabbed a hold of the man and quickly dragging him into cover.

"MAN DOWN!" he screamed. "CORPSMAN!"

Their platoon corpsman, Compton, immediately came running up and slid into position beside Adel. Breaking out his med kit, he instantly went to work while Adel hurriedly fired a few blindly aimed shots in retaliation.

Stopping to reload, Adel frantically looked around for another place to take cover behind, as with Compton and the wounded man it was now rather crowded, but with the murderous fire pouring in, it was almost impossible to move.

"GET UP, GET UP! EVERYBODY GET UP AND GET THE OFF THE STREET!"

Adel jerked his head up in surprise at the sound of Lancelot's voice, only to see him running towards him, gesturing wildly, all the while plasma continued to slam into the area surrounding him.

"GET THE FUCK UP!" Lancelot screamed, sounding more pissed than Adel had ever heard him. "ON YOUR FEET MARINES!"

"But we're taking heavy fire!" someone protested.

"WE CANNOT GET PINNED DOWN HERE!" Lancelot yelled back. He ran straight up to Adel and yanked him up to his feet. "WE ARE NOT DYING HERE, MARINE! GET MOVING!"

Seeing the furious look on Lancelot's face, all of a sudden the incoming plasma fire didn't seem so bad, and Adel found himself sprinting for cover inside the nearest building. He ran past X, who quickly lurched to his feet to join him, and then passed by Sam, who was trying to lay down some covering fire. At the same time, over the radio –

" _Viking 3-3, this is Warhammer: sitrep!"_ the voice of Staff Sergeant Reynolds demanded.

" _Engine is fucked! Plasma punching right through our front glacis plate and made a fucking mess of our engine! We're dead in the water!"_

" _Can ya shoot!?"_

" _Uh… yeah!"_

" _Then start layin' down suppressive fire! Marines, MOVE, GORRAM IT!"_

" _Copy! Viking 3-3 engaging! Gunner, OPEN FIRE!"_

 _ **BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!**_

The heavy roar of a 40mm autocannon firing on full auto instantly flooded the street and as Adel ran, he could see the Armadillo was practically firing in all directions. Massive shells the size of bowling balls smashed into buildings, punching holes into the pavement and knocking over walls.

"Viking 3-3, this is Warhammer 4-3 Charlie!" he heard Sam yelled as they ran. "Hit that yellow building on the right! It's full of fucking Covies!"

" _Copy! Alright Milton, you heard the fucking man: hit it with the fucking Argent! Rocket out -!"_

There was a loud explosion that sounded remarkably similar to a Jackhammer firing, before a black blur slammed into the building in question, causing the entire front wall to collapse in a massive cloud of dust. And out from the dust came –

"Covies in the open!" Adel roared as he dropped to one knee and opened fire.

His first target was a Covenant Grunt that had somehow lost its mask and as a result, sounded like it was choking. Adel's first round caught the creature smack dap in the middle of its chest, causing the alien to stumble backwards, before Adel's next four rounds slammed home, hitting the creature in the neck and head. Adel immediately panned towards a nearby Jackal, but just as he pulled the trigger –

 _Click_

"Shit! Jam!"

 _ **BOOM.**_

The Jackal promptly exploded as it took the 40mm shell directly to the chest, showering the street with gore.

"Come on Adel!" X screamed as he grabbed a hold of Adel, even as Adel tried his best to clear his jam. "We gotta go, we gotta – "

 **xxx**

 **Zek**

 _CRACK! TWANG!_

Zek ducked as a bullet shattered the brick wall just above his head, showering him in masonry dust, and he realized he'd been firing from this one window far too long – the humans had been able to locate his position.

He tucked his head and took off running down the hall, just as he heard the roar of a heavy weapon.

 _ **Boomboomboom!**_

The bolts from the human Shadow vehicle came screaming in and proceeded to obliterate the room Zek had been in moments before. Zek could feel splinters and chunks of masonry getting strewn about, and he stumbled forward, landing on the ground next to Rezan.

"Zek! Are you well?" Rezan yelled.

"I don't know!" Zek admitted as he blind fired his rifle out the hole Rezan was taking cover behind.

"Well – LOOK OUT!"

Rezan shoved Zek to the side and activated his energy pavise in time to intercept the hail of human bullets that flew their way. Zek winced as the pavise began to glow from the blows, but it held long enough for the barrage to end, whereupon Rezan promptly returned forward with his Type-25 pistol.

"This is not good!" Rezan noted as he ducked back down.

"We need to destroy that human Shadow!" Ziik yelled from his spot on the other side of the hole. He paused to toss a grenade out the hole before resuming. "It is too powerful!"

"Agreed."

Zek couldn't help but jump as the Sangheili Major appeared out of nowhere.

"If we destroy that vehicle, then the humans will undoubtedly fall like the leaves on the wind," the Major continued. "You three Kig-Yar: come with me!"

Feeling a bit mystified, Zek nevertheless scrambled to his feet and followed the Major as he lead them through the building. Leaping through a hole in the wall, Zek found himself in another building entirely. Not only that, when he glance out the nearest window, he realized he had a much better angle on the human Shadow.

"Take this," the Major demanded, holding up a bag and when Zek opened it, he found it was full of grenades. "I will be able to destroy the vehicle with this -" he held up his concussion rifle, "- but not if the humans are firing at me. You Kig-Yar while need to eliminate the remaining human warriors."

Zek nodded as he began distributing the grenades among his comrades. The Major waited until they were all ready, then bellowed:

"Warriors! ENGAGE!"

Zek promptly activated the grenade and hurtled it out of the window. He watched as the grenade fly through the air and land amongst a large crowd of human soldiers.

"GREN-" he heard one of them yell before the grenade exploded, tearing the humans to shreds. Zek waited until he heard Rezan and Ziik's grenades going off before he climbed to his feet and began firing.

At the same time, the Major stood and began emptying his concussion rifle into the vehicle's roof and side. Zek saw the vehicle absorb two hits before –

 **xxx**

 **Adel**

 _ **KABOOM!**_

Adel was knocked off his feet as the Armadillo unexpectedly went up like a two hundred fifty kilogram bomb. Flaming pieces of armor were sent straight into the air, only to come crashing down and landing amongst the infantry.

Staggering upright, Adel looked back in horror as the Army crew came stumbling out of the vehicle, all three of them completely engulfed in flames. He wanted to run over and go help them, but they had already attracted the attention of everyone else around them, plus, plasma fire was still raining down from all directions.

" _Viking 3-3 is down, Viking 3-3 is down!"_ someone was screaming over the radio. _"Our vehicle support is down!"_

"CORPSMAN!"

" _Where the fuck did that come from!?"_

"Contacts up high!" X suddenly screamed as he snapped his rifle up and began unloading on the windows overlooking the wreck of the Armadillo, and Adel looked up in time to see a three Jackals and a single Sangheili standing in the window –

"Shoot those motherfuckers!" he roared even as he lifted his rifle up and began unloading, but he was a second too late as the Covenant promptly disappeared.

"Reznik! Lay down some suppressing fire! Gale, pop a grenade in there!" Sam roared and Adel glanced over his shoulder in time to see Reznik just unloading an entire magazine from his MA5B while Gale popped a grenade into his under-barrel launcher, raised the sights, and fired.

 _Bloop!_

The grenade flew through the window where it detonated in a very unsatisfying explosion. Sam must have thought the same as he came running up and slapped X on the shoulder.

"X! Hit those fuckers with the Jackhammer!"

X tossed his rifle aside and planted the launcher onto his shoulder.

"Back- "

"You're clear!" Adel screamed before X could even finish. "Drop those pricks!"

"ROCK- "

 _WHOOMP!_

The entire room exploded outwards as the 102mm thermobaric rocket flew through the open window and detonated in the middle of the room. Adel couldn't tell if they had gotten the Covenant or not, and wasn't given the opportunity to find out as Lancelot came running up.

"Assault team, on me!" he roared before taking off once more.

Pausing only long enough to recover X's rifle for him, Adel took off in Lancelot's wake.

Lancelot led them into the lobby of a nearby building where the Reynolds, as well as the Marine machine gun team and the Army heavy machine gun team, were setting up their guns.

"Set up here!" Lancelot demanded. "Staff Sergeant Reynolds, establish a base of fire here, and start suppressing!"

"Aye, sir!"

"Everyone else, FOLLOW ME!"

Lancelot disappeared into the chaos, followed by the regular riflemen. Another grenade exploded nearby, but none of them faltered.

"Adel! Help me reloading this stupid thing!"

Adel turned his attention back to X, who was struggling to remove the empty tube.

"What do you want?" he yelled, tossing his bag to the ground.

"'Nother thermo!"

"Shit! Hey, fuckface!" he screamed at one of their ammo bearers. "Get over here and give me that damn rocket with the green ring around it!"

Fuckface, or 'Reznik' as Adel supposed he was actually called, came running up and turned around to allow Adel access to the rockets he was carrying. Adel struggled to remove the straps hold the rockets down.

Meanwhile, the machine guns were beginning to get put to work.

"Start talkin' MGs!" Reynolds commanded.

"Got it Sar'nt!" the Army commander, Corporal Mauser yelled. "Let's go Cooper! Three second burst, fire!"

The Army trooper manning the gun, Cooper, promptly let it rip.

"No, higher! Bring it up!"

"Hooah, Sar'nt! Cooper! Aim higher!"

While the machine gunners were working on figuring out their targets, Reynolds had grabbed Sam and dragged him over to the edge of the window.

"Corporal!" he yelled, ignoring the plasma that splashed nearby. "See that there buildin'?"

"Aye, Staff Sergeant!"

"I want it gone!"

"Aye, aye, Staff Sergeant! Adel, break out the C-12 and start making a satchel charge, let's go!"

As Adel hurriedly moved to start gathering all the pieces he needed, he couldn't help but reflect on all the chaos raging around him, and with a sinking heart, he came to a depressing realization:

That this was only the beginning

"Let's go Devil Dog, HURRY IT UP!"

 **xxx**

 **Zek**

Zek couldn't help but continue to pant from his near-death experience, even though it had occurred several minutes ago. The fuel rod cannon the humans had fired at him had been far faster than he had anticipated, and if it hadn't been for that grenade they had fired first, he and the others probably would have never left the room in time.

Nevertheless, the human Shadow was destroyed, which meant they could focus on eliminating the rest of the vermin.

"Major 'Kalamazee!"

Zek looked up as an Unggoy came running out of the chaos towards them.

"What is it?" the Sangheili Major demanded to know.

"Minor 'Merok is saying the humans be trying to 'flank us! He needs help!" the Unggoy gasped out.

Zek could see 'Kalamazee nodding his head and baring his teeth. "Then he shall have it. Warriors! Hold your ground! Kig-Yar, with me!"

With a loud mental sigh, Zek climbed to his feet once more.

This was going to be a _very_ long day.

 **XXXXX**

 **High Orbit, Actium  
May 7, 2545  
0812**

 **Amber**

" _Attention all hands, we are T minus five mikes to transition back to real space."_

Amber immediately sat up straighter in chair at that. For the last hour and a half, she, the crew, and – now that she thought about it – probably the entire fleet, had been sitting idly in orbit, simply waiting. The Fleet's part in Operation: SUDDEN PURGE II, wasn't to occur until after the ground forces had committed to their attack. That way, the Covenant Navy would be forced to choose between defending their landing site, and defending their positions, which would hopefully make it easier for the UNSC Navy to sneak in and destroy them.

With the UNSC Army and Marine Corps having started fighting some forty-five/fifty minutes ago, Amber's ship, the UNSC _Gabrielle,_ along with the rest of their destroyer squadron had gone ahead and jumped into slipspace in order to get into position to attack the Covenant. Now apparently they were less than five minutes away from that point.

The sound of loud chewing caught Amber's attention, and she glanced over her console in Tuna's direction. He was chewing on something loud and scented, and it clearly wasn't the tobacco he normally had before a fight like this.

"Hey, Tuna! Whatcha eatin'?" Amber asked in an effort to distract herself.

"Raspberry flavored gum," Tuna replied. "Pam's been pushing me to stop using tobacco products, if only for Cecelia's sake."

Amber nodded in understanding. Pam and Cecelia were Tuna's wife and daughter, respectively. "Got anymore?"

She could see Tuna nod before reaching into his shoulder pocket and digging out a small pack, of which he tossed over to her. Pulling out a stick, she popped it into her mouth and started chewing.

"Nervous?"

"Little bit," Amber admitted. "First time in non-simulated combat, at least aboard this ship. Don't want to screw up."

"What's there to screw up?" Tuna asked with a shrug. "You know just as well as I do, the only reason we're here is because we're responsible for maintaining the main battery. Aside from that, we don't do much else. Heck, we aren't even the ones who fire the main gun in battle; they control all that in the CIC."

Amber shrugged. In all honesty, that _was_ the problem. On Waystation, she had been in control of her destiny, controlling an Onager turret, but not only that, it had mostly been an individual fight. Here, on this ship, she was part of a team with people who would be depending on her to do her job right. And that upped the pressure considerably.

"How is this attack even supposed to work?" she asked instead. "I know we're supposed to be jumping in close to the Covenant fleet, but I thought we weren't able to do in-system micro jumps like the Covies can."

"I don't Amber, I just work here. All I know is that it took the processing power of _four_ smart A.I.s just to get us these jump coordinates, and it apparently will only work because of the amount of guidance beacons and mapping buoys we have in the system feeding us real-time, exact information. Other than that…" Tuna shrugged once more. "We can only hope it works otherwise, this could be a really short trip."

Amber shivered. Every Sailor that ever traveled through slipspace knew the risks they were taking. Despite having been using it for over a millennium, much of slipstream space was still a mystery to the UNSC.

" _Attention all hands,"_ Amber heard the Officer of the Deck suddenly announce over the intercom. _"We are transitioning back into real space in three… two…"_

Amber hurriedly braced herself.

"… _one… MARK!"_

 _Gabrielle_ shuttered as she swiftly exited from slipspace. Deep within her bowels, Amber immediately glanced at her displays. She didn't have access to the ship's exterior cameras, nor the tactical displays inside the CIC, so she had no idea what was going on outside, but she did have access to the channel the crewmembers of the CIC used to talk to each other, so she hurriedly switched her radio over.

Immediately she was assaulted by a series of voices as all sorts of people were talking over one another.

" _ALERT: incoming Bandits bearing direction one, three, seven, four – "_

" _TAO, this is Radar… holy shit! TAO, we're picking up the signatures of three Covenant battle groups on approaching bearing – "_

" – _MULTIPLE CONTACTS ON FULL – "_

" – _powering weapons – "_

" – _the hell did all these guys come from!?"_

Amber and Tuna exchanged a worried look. That didn't sound good.

"There weren't supposed to be Covenant this close!" Tuna exclaimed over the increasingly frantic calls of the CIC.

"Did anyone tell them that?" Amber automatically snarked back but internally, she found her heart was beating like a snare drum and she suddenly found it hard to chew her gum as all her saliva in her mouth had unexpectedly dried up.

She perked up when she heard a sharp voice coming through the radio.

" _TAO, unlock all weapon systems, set Ramparts to automatic and prioritize those fighters: keep them off my damn ship!"_ Commander Mark Lancaster, captain of the ship, barked over the chatter coming from the CIC. _"Arm Archer pods One Alpha through Five Alpha, and give me a firing solution for target 13-Bravo. Coordinate with the UNSC_ Michaela, _and standby to fire on my mark! Helm, check port to direction one two five!_

" _Aye, Captain! Missiles, unlock Archer pods One Alpha through Five Alpha and lock on to designated target. Weaps, load an AP shell into the MAC and standby to engage! Ops, find me a firing solution for target 13-Bravo!"_

Amber couldn't help but wince as she heard Shepard's aggravating voice replace Lancaster's on the radio, however she did her best to bring it under control as she turned her attention back to her consoles. The main capacitors were beginning to surge with power while at the same time, a loud _thunk_ noise filled the compartment as a multi-tonne solid core tungsten shell was dropped into the breech. Amber glanced her screen which showed the inside of the breech itself to make sure the projectile was seated properly, before glancing at Tuna.

"We're at full charge and power levels are holding steady," she reported. "Gun ready!"

"Copy! Switching control over to the CIC!" Tuna yelled back, even as he reached out and pulled a switch that would enable remote firing of the MAC. At the same time –

" _All batteries: FIRE!"_ Lancaster roared.

" _Weaps: fire at will,"_ Shepard repeated.

Despite the significant amount of sound buffering that separated the main battery compartment from the MAC itself, Amber could nevertheless feel the retort of the magnetic cannon firing as it sent the massive shell screaming downrange at speeds in excess of Mach twenty. A moment later, the entire system shot back, causing the _Gabrielle_ 's maneuvering thrusters to automatically kick in in order to compensate for the recoil.

"Shell away!" Tuna yelled over the radio while at the same time, Amber heard the head missile technician yelling, _"Missiles away!"_

" _Splash, MAC,"_ Shepard report barely half a second later. _"Bridge, CIC reports minimal damage. Thirty seconds for missile impacts. Weaps, reset firing mechanism."_

Amber was already on it. Not that there was much for her to do as the system had already automatically begun to recharge the capacitors while another solid core shell had been placed into the breech. Nevertheless, she carefully monitored her screens, to make sure everything was working exactly the way it should be.

" _Splash, missiles,"_ Shepard reported. _"Ops, anything?"_

" _We're reading minor fluctuations in the target's shields, ma'am! Recommend re-engaging before target can compensate!"_

" _Weaps, re-engage target 13-Bravo,"_ Lancaster ordered before Shepard could say anything.

" _Copy. Weaps, re-target 13-Bravo and fire when ready!"_

" _Cop- VAMPIRE VAMPIRE VAMPIRE! I've got three inbound plasma torpedoes bearing portside, one seven three!"_

" _Launch countermeasures! Helm, standby to ignite portside emergency thrusters on my mark!"_ Lancaster commanded. " _MARK!"_

There was a loud _bang_ and Amber found herself grabbing hold of her console as the entire ship physically shot to the side. Seconds later, the bulkhead walls rumble as something struck the outer hull while at the same time, a warning flashed across one of Amber's screens.

"Reading power fluctuations in capacitor three!" she reported.

"Probably radiation interference from that plasma torpedo!" Tuna quickly replied. "Divert some power over to number two, see if that doesn't level it out!"

Amber hurried hit a series of buttons as Lancaster called out over the radio, _"Damage report!"_

" _Sounding and Security, CIC: report status?"_ Shepard echoed.

" _This is Sounding and Security: minimal damage to the outer hull, though we are seeing minor shrapnel damage to Rampart turret four!"_

" _Understood. All available secondary battery gunners, report to turret four and begin emergency repairs."_

" _Helm, check port three three degrees and bring us back around. Weaps, prep MAC and arm pods Five through Eight, re-target 13-Bravo, and fire as she bears!"_

" _Ops, I need that firing solution right now!"_ Shepard warned.

" _Got it! Sending to you now!"_

" _Missiles away!"_

" _Weaps, fire at will!"_

"Shell away!" Tuna yelled, even as the MAC recoiled once more.

" _Splash, MAC. Ops?"_

" _Hang on, getting a reading… shields are down!"_

" _Bridge, TAO: CIC reports shields on target 13-Bravo are down, I say again, shields_ _ **are**_ _down!"_

" _Re-direction all Ramparts towards that target and give a status on my missiles!"_

" _Weaps, divert all secondary batteries towards 13-Bravo,_ " Shepard was commanding, even before Lancaster had fully stopped talking. _"Ops, give me a status on those missiles!"_

" _Missiles: ten seconds to impact!"_

" _TAO, head's up: Covenant pulse lasers are still active and have begun to engage our missiles."_

" _Target those pods with – ,"_ Lancaster started to say before he was abruptly interrupted by Shepard.

" _One moment, sir, UNSC_ Michaela _is firing – it's a hit! Getting readings target 13-Bravo has been cored from stern to amidship! They're losing power… I think they're down for the count, sir!"_

Amber couldn't help but join along with the rest of the crew as they broke out in cheers, even though technically she didn't really do anything. Plus, given that she didn't really know what was going on, she didn't know if destroying this one ship was good or not.

Still, the destruction of any Covenant ship was good in her book.

" _Focus up people!"_ Lancaster snapped, instantly silencing the cheers. _"We still got – "_

" _VAMPIRE VAMPIRE VAMPIRE! Incoming plasma torpedoes bearing three three seven!"_

" _Where'd those come from!?"_

There was a noticeable hesitation in Shepard's voice as she replied, _"Target 13-Bravo, sir!"_

For his part, Lancaster didn't seem interested in wasting time berating anyone. _"Launch countermeasures starboard side! All engines ahead, flank! Those silos on that ship most draw their power from another source, so take out the entire vessel! Weaps!"_

" _Weaps, load up a HE shell and standby to fire. Ops, lock onto the largest power source you can find; that should be what's controlling those torpedoes!"_

Hastily reaching up to the levers above her head, Amber yanked on one of them in order to switch magazines. This time, instead of an AP shell, a HE shell was loaded into the breech. Technically speaking, the term "HE" was a bit of a misnomer, as there was no explosives inside the shell, but with a flat nose and a soft core, the shell was designed to shatter upon impact as opposed to punch right through, essentially achieving the same effect.

Amber watched as the shell was loaded into the breech from the port side magazine, before throwing a glance at Tuna. "Gun ready!"

" _Fire!"_

The MAC recoiled once more.

" _Target is trashed,"_ Shepard reported.

" _Status on those torpedoes?"_ Lancaster immediately asked. _"TAO, what's the status of those torpedoes!?"_

Rather than answer, Amber suddenly heard Shepard announce over the ship's intercom, _"All hands, this is the TAO! Torpedoes inbound, starboard side! All hands, BRACE FOR IMPACT!"_

Amber blanched and immediately grabbed her console. For a full second, nothing seemed to happen. Then –

 _ **BOOMBOOM!**_

The entire ship was sent reeling as two explosions echoed throughout the entire vessel!

The deck beneath Amber's feet violently shook, and if she wasn't sitting down and strapped in, she would have fallen over. As it was, it took Amber just about all of her strength to avoid accidently slamming her head against the back of her chair. Warnings light started flashing across her screen, and all sorts of alarms began blaring, and over the sound of that, she could hear the very bulkhead walls groaning as if being placed under great strain, and she looked up in alarm as rusty dust began falling from the ceiling.

At once, calls began ringing out over both the intercom and the radio.

" _WARNING: HULL BREACH DETECTED."_

" _We're hit! Two plasma torpedoes, amidship, first deck, starboard side!"_

" _Fire detected in compartments eleven and seventeen."_

" _All available DC teams, TAO: report to first deck for immediate damage control!"_

" _We got a hull breach, amidship, main deck!"_

" _This is Commander Lancaster: seal all hatches and bulkhead doors leading to the breach! Helm, check starboard one three degrees, show our good side against the Covenant!"_

" _CORPSMAN! We need corpsmen down in compartment seventeen!"_

" _Medical teams to first deck, compartment seventeen!"_

" _Sounding and Security, TAO: report status on the rest of the hull!"_

As she listened to the reports streaming in, Amber felt her heart leaping up to her throat. Compartment seventeen. That was very close to Poolsie's station!

Without thinking, Amber began to unbuckle her safety harness and climb to her feet.

"Hey! HEY! AMBER!"

Amber looked around wildly to see Tuna gesturing at her.

"I know you're worried about Poolsie," he told her. "Hell, I am too. But we can't do anything about it now. We got to focus on our jobs: the _Gabrielle_ is reeling, but she's not down. Not yet. And because of that, we got to make sure we can still hit back. Let's run a diagnostic, and make sure the MAC is still operational!"

Amber swallowed as she realized Tuna was right. With a bit of reluctance, she sat back down and pulled up a screen.

"Capacitor three looks like it's bent!" she warned.

"Make's sense: it's located about where the ship got hit. Lancaster's still got another six capacitors to play with, but our focus now is to get that one back online."

Tuna pushed himself away from his station and climbed to his feet.

"I'm going to get some tools and run down there and see if I can't get it fixed," he told her as he strapped a TACPAD to his arm. "Stay here, let the CIC know what happened, and see if you can't isolate the problem!"

"Right!"

Amber grabbed her radio.

"CIC, this is Main Battery. Damage report: capacitor three is down, cause unknown. We working on isolating the issue now, but right now, you're going to be down one seventh power," Amber reported.

" _Copy,"_ Shepard replied, sounding distracted. _"Captain, receiving encrypted message from the squadron commander: the UNSC_ Raphaela _is under heavy fire. Captain Olivetti is ordering us to accompany the_ Michaela _on a flanking attack on target 7-Alpha in an attempt to draw their fire."_

" _Alright, let do it then! Helm, come about one one seven degrees, fore. Weaps, load AP, obtain firing solution on target 7-Alpha and standby to fire on my mark."_

" _Captain, be advised: Main Batt reports MAC has sustained some minor damage, and that we are no longer able to fire at full power."_

" _Understood! Sitrep on our hull damage?"_

" _Breach has been sealed, however we're still combating the fires. Sir, I'm also getting reports from Second Batt that Rampart three is down on that side, I say again, Rampart three is down, however crews are reporting they will be able to repair the damage and bring it back online, it'll just take some time."_

" _How long?"_

" _Second Batt reports… twenty minutes, sir."_

" _Alright then. Comms, signal the_ Michaela _and inform Commander McNeil as to our status: we're going to need him to take point on this attack, however we should be able to provide him some supporting fire. Helm, all engines ahead, full. Weaps, status?"_

" _Time to maximum effective range, thirty seconds sir."_

"Amber!"

Amber glanced up from her console to see Tuna preparing to leave the room, with a cart full of tools.

"I'm heading down!" he told her. "You isolate that problem yet?"

"No, I'm still working on it!" she replied and turned back to her screen in time to hear Lancaster order the radio ordering, _"All batteries, fire!"_

" _Weaps: fire!"_

Just as Shepard said that though, all of Amber's screen abruptly went black.

"What the – " Amber stammered, before kicking the bottom of her console in the hopes it would bring her screen back online. Naturally, it didn't work. "TUNA!"

Tuna immediately came running over. "What happened?"

"Everything just went black and I have no idea why!" Amber yelled even as she reached over the flicked the power switch a couple of times. Her screen immediately came to life once more, but now they were filled with all sorts of error messages. "What the fuck is this shit!?"

" _CIC, Bridge: I did give the order to fire, did I not?"_

" _Uh, yes sir, you did."_

" _Then why didn't the MAC go off?"_

"… _I don't know. Weaps, fire!"_

" _TAO, this is Weaps: we're pulling the trigger but nothing is happening. We're not sure what the issue is."_

" _Main Batt, this is the CIC: we just lost fire control. What the hell is happening?"_

Amber ignored the call as she frantically typed away at her keyboard.

"Amber, anything?" Tuna called from his station as he worked just as frantically.

"No, I can't figure it out!" Amber called back. "It doesn't – wait! I got an error code, zero three seven! 'Remote access offline.'"

"What? That doesn't make sense."

"You look at it then!" Amber snapped.

" _Main Batt, CIC: give me fire control!"_

Amber grabbed her radio. "CIC, Main Batt: we're working on the issue!"

" _Well, work faster!"_

"What the fuck do you think we're doing!?" Amber snapped back before she could restrain herself.

"Fuck!" she snarled as he hurtled the radio away.

"Hey! Knock that shit off, right now!" Tuna snapped. "Reset the hardline, see if that doesn't do it."

Doing her best to rein in her temper, Amber reached over and began flicking the switch from "remote" to "manual" a couple of times, before glancing at her screen. "I got nothing."

"Crap," Tuna grunted as he pushed his seat back and popped open the panel beneath his console. "Hardline might have been unplugged by the explosions, or maybe it was cut or damage, I don't know. I'm going to work on this issue, but it's going to take some time before I can figure it out. Let the CIC know that, for now at least, they're not going to be able to fire the MAC from there."

Amber growled under her breath and reluctantly picked up her radio once more. Before she could say a word though, Shepard cut in.

" _Main Batt, this is the TAO: give me a sitrep,"_ she demanded.

"CIC, Main Batt. Situational report as follows: remote fire control offline, cause currently unknown," Amber informed her, doing her best to keep her impatience from rising to the surface.

" _Understood. And Main Batt, next time you disrespect me in such a blatant manner again –"_

" _Lieutenant Shepard, this is_ _ **not**_ _the time or place for this,"_ Lancaster interrupted before Shepard could finish. _"Main Batt, switch over to manual control, and do it now!"_

"Aye, aye Captain," Amber hastily said. Flicking the switch over to manual, she grabbed a hold of the firing handle. "Gun ready, standing by to fire."

" _TAO, you have control."_

" _Standby, reacquiring target… Target locked, FIRE!"_

Amber twisted the handle. At once, the entire MAC leapt back as it spat out a shell at high speeds, and Amber let out a mute sigh of relief. She was slightly concerned that wouldn't have worked either.

" _Splash, MAC. Minimal damage. Bridge, target 7-Alpha is coming about. We're picking up a massive surge of energy on her forward bow – she's preparing to fire her forward energy projector!"_

" _Helm, prepare to ignite ventral side emergency thrusters! Weaps, hit that target and knock her off-balance before she can shoot!"_

" _Main Batt, load AP and fire when ready!"_

Amber hurriedly reached up and pulled down on a couple of levers, quickly glanced at her screen to make sure the right shell was getting loaded into the breech. Grabbing the firing handle, she quickly twisted it –

\- only for nothing to happen.

"What the _hell!?"_

Amber glanced at her screen.

"Ah, are you _kidding me_ right now!?" she exclaimed as she realized the MAC's capacitors had no charge as, for some reason, they hadn't automatically done so. "Tuna! The automatic reset is down, too!"

"What!? This can't all be from those plasma torpedoes, this has got to be from those kamikaze Banshees!"

"But we went through the entire system with a fine-tooth comb!" Amber protested even as she began the entire sequence of getting the capacitors to recharge. "Chief Carrizosa even signed off on our work! Why are we having so many problems!?"

"I don't know, but we're going to need him down here to help out!"

" _Helm, ignite ventral emergency thrusters!"_

Amber was nearly knocked off her feet as she felt the _Gabrielle_ launch straight up into the air.

"Goddammit," Amber hissed in pain as she accidently bit the inside of her lip.

" _Main Batt, CIC: I understand you're having issues, but I need you to work a lot faster than this. We're in the middle of a heavy fight here; that gun needs to fire_ **when** _I give the order, not after!"_

"Do _not_ respond to that," Tuna snapped. "Chief Carrizosa, this is Tuna: we're having a lot of issues down here in the main battery. I need another body to help me with repairs, but I also need GM Owain on fire control."

" _Roger. I'm coming down."_

"Alright Amber, as of right now, your primary focus is on firing that gun," Tuna commanded. "Do whatever you have to, just keep it firing. I'm going to be working on this; let me know if something else breaks!"

"Got it!"

Amber turned her attention back to her controls as Shepard began to speak once more.

" _Bridge, CIC: 7-Alpha is breaking contact and falling back._ Michaela _is signaling she's pursuing."_

" _Helm, all engines ahead, flank! Weaps, lock onto 7-Alpha's engines – shut them down!"_

" _Main Batt, CIC: status?"_

Amber grabbed her radio. "CIC, Main Batt: gun ready!"

" _Ops, give me a firing solution on target 7-Alpha's engines!"_

" _VAMPIRE VAMPIRE VAMPIRE! I'm picking up signatures on three, now four plasma torpedoes bearing four eight seven!"_

" _Helm, snap to direction zero one five – EVADE!"_

Amber grabbed her radio. "CIC, Main Batt: you want me to shoot or not?"

" _Negative Main Batt, hold fire, we lost the target. Ops, give me status on those vampires."_

" _Vamps have split up – I'm tracking two torpedoes headed towards the_ Michaela, _two headed in our direction bearing five nine six and headed straight for our dorsal hull!"_

" _TAO, launch countermeasures forward of our bow and Helm, check down six five degrees!"_

Amber grabbed hold of her seat in order to brace herself as she felt the _Gabrielle_ pitch forward rather abruptly. Beside her, she could hear Tuna cursing.

"Tuna, you alright?" she called out.

"Can't work under these conditions!" he complained.

"Sorry, I'll be sure to lodge a complaint with the Covenant if I get a chance!" she sarcastically replied.

"Your sarcasm isn't helping!"

Any retort Amber may have had as she heard Lancaster abruptly call out, " _CIC, give me status on those Vamps! Did they go for the decoys?"_

" _Negative! Vamp are still tracking us!"_

" _Helm, give me a quarter turn port along our longitudinal axis, Weaps, lock onto those Vamps with missile pods One Echo and Four Echo and attempt to kill with bird!"_

" _Affirmative! Missiles away sir! Standby… no joy, I say again,_ _ **no joy**_ _with birds!"_

" _All hands, BRACE FOR IMPACT DORSAL SIDE!"_

Amber gritted her teeth and grabbed her restraints. For the second time in less than fifteen minutes, she found herself bracing for another impact.

 _ **BOOM!**_

A single explosion sent trembles down the entire length of the ship, but Amber dared not relax as she waited for the other torpedo to hit. For a long moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then –

" _CIC, what's the status of that other torpedo!?"_ Lancaster demanded to know.

" _Search now, sir. The second torpedo… the second torpedo overshoot! It missed!"_

" _What!? How?"_

" _Uh, unknown – wait! Target 7-Alpha was just taken out and as a result, torpedoes must have lost their magnetic guidance at the last second!"_

" _Taken out? By whom?"_

" _Getting IFF tag… it's the UNSC_ Hermione!"

" _The flagship of Cruiser Battle Group 9? What are they doing – never mind. TAO, damage report!"_

" _First torpedo only grazed us sir. Damage control teams are working on obtain a full diagnostic, however preliminary reports suggest most of our dorsal armor is… gone, sir, boiled away by the plasma."_

" _Understood."_

For a moment, it was silent and Amber waited, unsure of what they were about to do. Then Lancaster spoke up once more.

" _TAO, this is the Captain. I want a no-shit assessment: can the_ Gabrielle _continue in this fight?"_

Shepard was silent for the moment, and Amber found herself holding her breath, waiting to see what Shepard would say. It seemed unusual to her that the Commander Lancaster would be asking Shepard what she thought, as this normally would be a decision he should be making, but then again, it was hard for her to understand what was going on aboard the rest of the ship stuck inside her hole.

" _No, sir,"_ Shepard finally replied. _"I don't believe we can. We've got damage across the board, multiple systems are down or damaged, including our main battery, and we've expended roughly half of all our countermeasures and ready ammunition reserves. With Cruiser Battle Group 9 having joined the fight, recommend we withdraw to rearm and enact repairs, sir."_

This time it was Lancaster's turn to be silent.

" _Agreed,"_ he finally said. _"Contact Captain Olivetti and request permission to withdraw. Inform the_ Michaela, _and see if she can't move in and provide as cover as we withdraw."_

" _Copy, contacting now… Sir, Captain Olivetti has given us the green light, however… sir, we've lost all contact with the_ Michaela… _furthermore, Ops can't find their IFF signature… well, anywhere, sir."_

There was silence on the radio for nearly a minute as the implications of that statement hit everyone listening. Somehow, during the chaos, their sister ship the UNSC _Michaela_ had been destroyed without anyone noticing.

" _Understood,"_ Lancaster finally said, his voice grim and tensed. _"We –_

" _BANDITS BANDITS BANDITS! TAO, this is Ops: we're picking up signatures of nearly four dozen Bandits approaching from three different vectors: four six degrees up off our dorsal bow, two seven degrees off our starboard side bow and two three seven degrees off our ventral bow!"_

" _Which group is the largest?"_ Lancaster cut in before Shepard could say anything.

" _Dorsal bow group, sir! I count twenty-one separate signatures consisting of both Type-31 Seraphs and Type-52 Phantom gunboats!"_

" _Helm, check up four six degrees and point our main battery right at the incoming!"_ Lancaster roared, even as Operations continued to speak. _"Weaps, direct all Archer pods at group two off our starboard bow and Ramparts at group three off our ventral bow!"_

" _Missile Techs, load ASGM-10 missiles in pods One Alpha through Five Alpha,"_ Shepard yelled before Lancaster had finished. _"Second Batt, redirect all guns to newly establish coordinates. Main Batt, load Beehive rounds, half charge, and prepare to fire!"_

"Main Batt confirms!" Amber yelled into her mic before grabbing her controls. "Swapping shells!"

Working as fast as she could, Amber set about removing the shell already in the breech, shoving it back into its proper magazine. Then, grabbing and twisting a nearby dial, she rotated the breech around so it opened up to the third magazine that held all of their specialized magazines, and loaded up one of the shells known as a "Beehive" round. Shoving the round into the breech, Amber checked her camera to make sure it was seated properly, before spinning in her chair to face the panel that control the MAC's capacitors.

"Half-charge," she muttered under her breath as she set about disconnecting the capacitors to every other magnetic coil along the length of the MAC's barrel. "Gun ready!"

" _Fire!"_

Amber twisted the firing handle.

The room shook as the MAC recoiled once more, but even as it reset, Amber didn't bother wasting time waiting for orders. She quickly began disconnecting the coils she had just used, then reconnecting the ones she hadn't; they were still at full power, which meant it would just be faster to reconnect them as opposed to waiting for the others to recharge.

Grabbing the controls to load another shell in, she hesitated, not entirely sure what they were about to need next, then realized they would probably be still dealing with the incoming Bandits, so she hurriedly went about loading another Beehive round into the breech.

Sure enough –

" _Helm, come about starboard and target that second group of Bandits!_ "

" _Second Batt, shift fire to group one!"_

"CIC, this is Main Batt," Amber yelled into her mic. "Gun ready!"

" _Copy! Standby… not yet, not yet… fire!"_

Amber twisted the handle once more.

" _Direct hit! I count seven Bandits splashed!"_

" _Captain, TAO: Bandits are right on top of us! They're too close to use the main gun!"_

" _Roger! All secondary batteries and missile pods, fire at will! Keep the Bandits away from the dorsal and starboard hull! Armor is stripped in those locations, and we can't afford to take any more hits there! Helm, all engines ahead, full, but give me a three quarter speed turn port side on our longitudinal axis to keep those Bandits guessing!"_

" _Main Batt, TAO: reset firing mechanism for anti-ship fire, then standby for further orders! All other batteries, you're weapons free! Keep those Bandits off us!"_

Amber hurriedly loaded an AP shell into the breech of the MAC, then reconnected all the capacitors back to their magnetic coils along the barrel in preparation for their immediate use. Once that was finished though, she found there wasn't exactly anything left for her to do, but at the same time, she found she couldn't exactly sit still. She glanced over her console in Tuna's direction.

"Tuna, you alright?" she anxiously asked.

"Man, this would be going so much faster if I could figure out what was wrong," she heard him complain. "Chief, did that do anything?"

" _Negative. Try the port to the right!"_

"There _is_ no port to the right!"

Realizing how busy he was, Amber decided not to bother him further. Instead, she decided to turn her attention back to the radio as the rest of the ship did their best to fend off the Covenant fighter attack.

" _Turret two, CIC: we're picking up a cluster of Bandits approaching off our forward bow, bearing – "_

" _\- engage with missiles pod One Charlie through Five Charlie all targets within the designated area: sweep them all clear – "_

" – _turret three reporting ready ammunition reserves down to twenty-five percent, gun crews requesting immediate resupply from arms locker…"_

" _All hands, be advised, Seraphs attempting to engage us with plasma charges -!"_

Even as Shepard announced that, loud rumblings could be heard coming from all directions.

" – _taking hits from plasma charges all along our stern – "_

" _\- Sound and Security report status on integrity of the hull – "_

" _\- TAO, Ops, I'm seeing two concentrations of forces: one appears to be going for our engines, the other – "_

Amber looked up from the noise of the radio. She could have sworn she heard a noise coming from the barrel of the MAC…

"Tuna, did you hear that?" she yelled.

"Hang on Chief. What?" Tuna yelled back.

Amber shook her head. "Never mind! I just – "

" _Main Batt, CIC: did you copy!?"_

Amber grabbed her radio. "Negative, say again your last."

" _I said lock down the barrel cover to the MAC! Bandits are attempting to fire plasma charges down the barrel! I say again – "_

The remainder of what Shepard was saying was lost to Amber as she looked up in alarm as the bulkhead wall separating the compartment from the breech of the MAC began to rattle and shake.

"Tuna," Amber called out as she started to climb to her feet. "Do you hea–"

 _ **BOOM!**_

Without warning, the wall abruptly exploded inwards!

The last thing Amber saw was a piece of metal hurtling straight towards her –

\- then the world went black.

* * *

1\. **M875 Engineer Breaching Vehicle (EBV)** : this vehicle was briefly mentioned back in chapter 15, though I didn't give it a name or a designation, so I figured I would do it now. Basically, it's a mine breaching vehicle built on a M850 Grizzly chassis. However, instead of a dual 120mm main cannon, it's instead armed with two mine clearing charges on the rear, and a mine plow mounted on the front. In essence, it's intended to be the UNSC equivalent of the USMC's M1150 Assault Breacher Vehicle.

 **Author's Note: "Rifle Division"**

I suppose now would be as good of a time as any to explain what the difference between a "Rifle Division" and an "Infantry Division" would be in my little slice of the universe. It's nothing that fancy but essentially, an "Infantry Division" would be a mechanized infantry division, similar to the way infantry divisions are in the modern day US Army, whereas a "Rifle Division" would be more of your traditional light infantry division.

In other words:

\- Infantry Division = equipped with IFVs and MBTs

\- Rifle Division = equipped with Warthogs utility vehicles and Wolverine half-tracks

(* note: I would have rather not used half-tracks as I do understand there are pretty good reasons why half-tracks pretty much disappeared after WWII, however the M9 "Wolverine" anti-aircraft tank – which is built on a half-track - is a canon unit from _Halo Wars_ , and it didn't make sense to me the UNSC would have that one variant chassis for that one specific role, so I figured there had to be an "troop carrying" half-track variant. To make things simple though, I kept the name the same.)

So, now you're probably wondering, "Then what's the difference between an Infantry Division, and an Armored Division?" Well, essentially, the way I imagine it is, an "Armored Division" is more of a tank division.

What I mean by that is, while both divisions would of course be combined arms divisions (with their own artillery, engineer, tank, IFV, air support, etc.) in an Armored Division, there would be a lot more tanks and armored battalions as opposed to an Infantry Division, which would have more mechanized infantry battalions. To explain further:

In a standard US Army "Armored Brigade Combat Team," there are usually two armored battalions (consisting of two tank companies and a single mechanized infantry company,) and one mechanized infantry battalion (consisting of one tank company and two mechanized infantry companies.) That's how a brigade in an Armored Division would look.

In an UNSC Army Infantry Division, the brigades would be reversed: only one armored battalion, and two mechanized infantry battalions.

Furthermore, the vehicles for both divisions would be slightly different: Armored Divisions would be equipped with M432 "Armadillo" IFVs and M850 "Grizzly" MBTs, whereas Infantry Divisions would be equipped with a bit lighter equipment: a yet unnamed IFV and M808 "Scorpion" MBTs. The idea being that, in an armored offensive, Armored Divisions would be used in the "spearhead" role, whereas Infantry Divisions would be more for the "exploitation" role.

So, to summarize so far:

 **Armored Division** = tank division

 **Infantry Division** = mechanized infantry division

 **Rifle Division** = light infantry division

 **Cavalry Division** = motorized infantry division (with Bisons as their main vehicle)

(*the divisions would be further divided in that, Armored and Infantry Divisions would have belong to the UNSC Army proper, whereas Cavalry and Rifle Divisions would have belong to the Colonial Militia, but that's for another note.)

(**also note that the US Army does not, nor has ever, used the designation "Rifle" for any of their division types. This is a Soviet Red Army/Russian Ground Forces term, which they use in lieu of "infantry")

Now, I realize this is more than likely a rather inefficient and probably an unrealistic way of organizing things, giving different divisions rather specialized roles as opposed to only having a few units that generalize in everything, but one thing I've noticed about when reading up on world militaries is that, the larger the military is, the more willing they are to invest in specialized units versus more generalized units. Special operation forces in the United States is a prime example of this: just looking at units that sort of deal with direct action alone, the US military has about eight separate units that all specialize in different roles, as opposed to other nations like the United Kingdom or Germany (which I think both have two,) Canada (which has three, I think,) or France (which I believe has four.)

Basically, the larger the military, the more money and personnel they have that can be reserved for specialized roles. And, given how large (and politicized) the UNSC Army most undoubtedly would have been prior to the Covenant invasion… well, it made sense in _my_ head though no doubt some of you will disagree.


	44. Chapter 43

**Chapter 43**

 **High Orbit, Actium  
May 7, 2545  
0842**

 **Amber**

"… _Main Batt, this is the CIC: do you copy!? Come in, Main Batt!"_

Amber woke with a start. For a moment, she just laid there, trying to figure out what happened, when she felt a jab of pain coming from the left side of her face, causing her to groan. Very slowly, she lifted her hand to feel it.

Her left cheek felt hot to the touch, and it felt like it was swollen. Experimentally, she opened and closed her mouth a few times, which she could do without too much pain, which was good as that meant she didn't have any broken bones, but it was definitely bruised. It felt like that time when she was ten, and her dad accidently pegged her in the face with a ball while they were playing a game of catch.

What the heck happened?

Slowly, she rolled herself over onto her back but as she did, she suddenly realized her mouth was full of saliva. Lowering the mouth cover to her anti-flash hood, she spat on the deck, then beadily opened her eyes, only to see a fair amount of blood mixed in with her saliva. She couldn't help but stare at the sight, transfixed by how red it looked.

" _Main Batt, do you copy!?"_

Amber automatically looked up at the shout. And that was when she noticed the fire.

A large hole had been blast through the bulkhead wall separating the compartment from the MAC system itself. Melted shards of metals had been tossed around the room, igniting everything that had been flammable, creating a sizable fire that was slowly spreading through the room. While most of the smoke was getting sucked away down the barrel of the MAC, which was still exposed to the exterior of the ship, because the barrel was so long, a fair amount of smoke was still being retained in the compartment, making it slowly hard to breath.

The sight of the fire sent adrenaline spiking through Amber's veins, electrifying her. Ignoring her aching body, she pulled herself upright and dragged herself to her console and immediately slammed her hand on a large red button that read "Emergency Stop," which immediately killed all power leading to the compartment, as well as the MAC. While it wouldn't stop the fire that was already present, it would hopefully prevent it from spreading any further.

As the room was plunged into darkness, save the light from the fire (the emergency lights having been destroyed by the explosion,) Amber hurriedly moved to completely seal off all magazines from the MAC, as well as eject the shell already in the breech into space, just in case.

" _Main Batt, this is the Captain: respond, dammit!"_

Amber grabbed her radio.

"This is Main Batt," she hoarsely yelled, before looking around. "FIRE IN THE MAIN BATTERY COMPARTMENT!"

" _FIRE IN THE MAIN BATTERY COMPARTMENT! All firefighting teams, report to the Main Battery compartment!"_

As the call went out, Amber limply dropped the radio onto the ground. She found herself coughing, and she realized that was because smoke was beginning to waft around the room and with a start, she suddenly remembered by sealing the magazines, that also automatically sealed the barrel to prevent further damage from spreading. She could try and override, but with her starting to feel more and more lightheaded, she knew she couldn't waste anymore time: she had to get out of here.

But before she could, she couldn't shake the feeling that she was somehow forgetting something…

"Fishy," she muttered to herself, before coughing again. "Something fish? Or sandwich? Fish sandwich? Tuna fish sandwich… TUNA!"

With a start, Amber surged upright to her feet once more and hurried over to Tuna's station on the other side of her console.

"Tuna!" she yelled again. "Tuna, are you alright? Can you hear me!?"

There was no response at first, however as Amber drew nearer to Tuna's station, she heard it: just under the crackling of fire, there was a mute groan.

Quickly dropping to her knees, Amber poked her head into the small crawl space Tuna had been working in just before the explosion.

"Oh, crap!" she gasped as she stared at the sight and tried to piece together what had happened.

Tuna must have removed his head in order to have a bit more room to work. However, when the breech blew, because he wasn't strapped in, the blast must have thrown him around, causing him to bang his head pretty hard against the ceiling of the crawl space. As a result, he had a _very_ nasty looking bump on his front left temple, and he appeared to be only semi-conscious.

"Tuna!" Amber called out, reaching out to lightly tap his cheek. "Can you hear me?"

Tuna didn't respond and instead, merely groaned. He didn't seem to even be aware of Amber's presence.

Amber frantically looked around. She couldn't stay in this room, as visibility was quickly disappearing yet, at the same time, she couldn't just leave Tuna here to die.

"Hang in there Tuna, I'll get you out!"

Ducking her head down as low to the ground she possibly could, Amber took a deep breath, and then held it in place. Oxygen secure for now, Amber staggered to her feet, then dashed over to the nearest emergency kit mounted near the bulkhead door leading in and out of the room, praying that the explosion hadn't damaged it. Thankfully for her, it hadn't, and without thinking, she drove her fist into the glass cover, shattering it. Reaching inside, she blindly dug around until she found what she was looking for: an emergency O2 mask and tank.

Slipping the mask on and strapping the small two liter tank to her waist, Amber took a couple of deep breaths to refill her lungs, before properly opening up the container. Shoving aside all the equipment she didn't need, she dug around until she found the emergency stretcher.

"TUNA! Hang on! I'm coming to get you!" Amber yelled as she ran back, just in case Tuna could still hear her.

Tossing the stretcher onto the ground, Amber set about extending it, but as she worked, she started to hear Tuna coughing and with a start, she realized the smoke was beginning to completely fill the room.

"Dammit! I should have grabbed the other mask!" she swore to herself as she felt like smacking herself. She briefly wondered if she had enough time to go get it, but looking around she realized, no, no she didn't. She had to get Tuna out of here, now.

"Tuna! Hang in there!" Amber encouraged as she finished prepping the stretcher. Grabbing a hold of Tuna's leg, she was somehow able to slide him out of the crawl space, but then she was confronted with another issue: Tuna was way too heavy to pick up by herself. Try as she could, there was just no way she could get him into the stretcher.

"Come on Tuna!" she yelled as she desperately tried to slide him on. "You got to work with me! Wake up dude! WAKE UP GM2! WAKE UP!"

"AMBER!"

Amber automatically looked up at the shout, and sagged in relief as she spotted the single person wearing a firefighter's mask and carrying a heavy duty flashlight come running into the room.

"OVER HERE!" she tried to yell as loudly as she could through the faceplate of her mask. Fortunately the figure seemed to hear her and dashed over to her location, and as he got closer, Amber was pleasantly startled to find that it was Chief Leporidae, of all people.

He, too, seemed to brighten upon seeing her, but fortunately he didn't bother wasting any time with greetings.

"What happened to him?" he yelled.

"I think he hit his head!" she yelled back. "He's barely conscious!"

"Damn! We got to get him out of here! Hang on!"

Pulling out a med kit from seemingly nowhere, Amber watched as Leporidae carefully strap a brace around Tuna's neck, before putting an oxygen mask around his nose and mouth.

"Breathe Tuna, breathe!" Amber yelled in encouragement.

"Amber, we got to get him out of here!" Leporidae yelled. "Grab his legs, I'll get his torso. I'm going to count to three, then lift, alright? One, two, three, LIFT!"

Pulling up with all her strength, she and Leporidae were somehow able to get Tuna onto the stretcher. Amber took a step back and anxiously watched as Leporidae strap Tuna down before they were ready.

"We got to get him to the sick bay!" Amber yelled.

"I don't know where that is yet!" Leporidae admitted. "You need to lead the way!"

Amber nodded, then grabbed the front of the stretcher. "Same lift procedure?"

"Yeah, yeah!"

"Okay! One, two, three, LIFT!"

Lifting the stretcher between them, they stagger towards the bulkhead door and out of the room, stumbling out into the corridor. Amber started to head in the direction of the sick bay, but paused as she spotted two people wearing firefight equipment running towards her. As they drew closer, she could see it was Eddie, as well as his supervisor, Damage Controlman Third Class Allison "Ally" Dreyfus.

Eddie immediately broke out in a smile as he spotted Amber, and he took a step forward as if to say something, but Ally quickly thrusted her arm out horizontally, stopping him in his tracks.

"Amber!" Ally yelled. "Qu'est-ce s'est passé?"

If the situation wasn't so serious, Amber would have laughed. What happened? Hell, Amber was still trying to figure that one out herself.

"Je ne sais pas!" Amber yelled back instead. "Quelque chose a explosé, et maintenant y'a un feu!"

"Putain!" Ally swore. "On y va alors, Eddie!"

Ally took off down the corridor in the direction of the Main Battery compartment with Eddie in tow. Amber glanced over her shoulder to watch them go, only to see Leporidae giving her a curious look.

"You speak French?"

"I'm half Québécoise," Amber replied. "About a quarter Parisian French, and a quarter Welsh."

Leporidae stared at her for a moment.

"That is _really_ cool," he said sincerely, and Amber couldn't help but feel a bit warm and giddy inside.

"Come on," she said, in an effort to mask her embarrassment. "We got to get Tuna to the sick bay!"

"Right!"

They took off in the direction of the sick bay once more. As they ran, Amber suddenly became consciously aware of the explosions that were causing the entire ship to rattle, and she realized they were still engaged. She wondered what was going on, but she had accidently left her radio back in the compartment, and without it, Amber was now effectively blind and deaf as to what was occurring outside.

Reaching the sick bay, they staggered inside, only to be confront with a rather chaotic room that was barely being kept under control by the chief hospital corpsman. Wounded Sailors from all different departments were either staggering in, or being carried in by their buddies. Almost all the beds appeared to be full, and all the medical personnel appeared to have their hands full.

Amber was shocked by the sight. She hadn't realized the _Gabrielle_ had already taken this many casualties.

"What do you got!?"

Amber jumped as a hospital corpsman first class appeared out of nowhere and began checking Tuna over. Amber didn't recognize the man, but Leporidae clearly did because he immediately called out, "Rossi! È ferito, male!"

"Okay!" Rossi yelled back after a brief look at Tuna. "Put him here!"

He extended a table from the nearby bulkhead wall and with his help, the three of them were able to get Tuna on top. While Rossi set about checking Tuna over, both Amber and Leporidae quickly removed their oxygen masks, then Leporidae set about breaking down the stretcher. As he worked, it was Amber's turn to give him a curious look.

"You speak Italian?" she asked.

"No," Leporidae admitted with a sheepish grin. "That was about the extent of my linguistic abilities."

Amber couldn't help but smirk in response.

"You, Gunner's Mate! What's the problem!?"

Amber jumped and turned around to see another stressed out looking Corpsman appear out of no where.

"Chief, you okay?" she asked Leporidae before Amber could respond.

"Yeah, I'm fine, Corpsman," he replied.

"Then get out of here," the Corpsman insisted. "It's crowded enough as it is, we don't need perfectly healthy people hanging around."

"Right. GM, I gotta head back to my post outside the CIC. I'll see you later!"

With that, Leporidae took off and Amber started to turn and watch him go, but the Corpsman grabbed a hold of her chin. Without warning, she pushed a couple of fingers against Amber's badly bruised face

"Ow! What the fuck!?" Amber stammered, but the Corpsman ignored her.

"Cheek bone feels intact," she reported. "As does the eye socket. GM, follow this light with your eyeballs."

The Corpsman produced a pen light, of which she promptly shined into Amber's eyes, causing her to blink. Nevertheless, Amber did her best to keep her eyes open as the Corpsman waved the light in front of her.

"Both eyes appear to be intact," the Corpsman reported, flicking her light off and allowing Amber to reach up and gingerly wipe away her tears. "And you're not showing any signs of concussion. You're good to go, shipmate. Get out of here and get back to your station!"

And with that, the Corpsman disappeared to go check up on another patient before Amber could get a word in otherwise.

"But my station's on fire," she protested to herself.

She looked around the bay, wondering where she was supposed to go now, but seeing at how crowded the room was getting, decided it wasn't worth staying here, at least. Grabbing her mask and O2 tank, Amber started to head back to her station, figuring she could go help Ally and Eddie with the fire, if they hadn't brought it under control already, when someone grabbed her arm.

"Oi, Amber!" Carrizosa yelled. "What happened down there?"

"I don't know Chief!" Amber replied. "The freaking MAC just exploded and I don't know how!"

Carrizosa proceeded to let out a string of curses before abruptly looking back at her.

"I'm headed down there to go see the extent of the damage and figure out if we can't bring the main battery back online!" he declared. "You head up to first deck – Rampart three is down, and Second Batt is stripping out the ammo to redistribute to the other turrets. Go help them!"

"Aye, aye, Chief!" Amber yelled, then took off running the corridor again.

Reaching the first flight of stairs, she headed down to first deck. As she did, _Gabrielle_ violently shook once more, causing her to stumble, but fortunately she was able to catch herself.

Making it onto the proper deck, Amber entered into the maintenance shaft and dashed over to the area where Rampart turret number three was located. There, she found two other ginner's mate frantically removing the very long belt of 50mm ammo from the turret's drum and loading it onto a cart for easier transport.

"GM1 Sharifaie!" Amber yelled out, recognizing one of the men present as one of the head's of the secondary battery crew. "Chief Carrizosa sent me down here to help! What do you need?"

"Nothing!" Sharifaie yelled back. "We got it under control, dunno why the Chief sent you down to me!"

Amber mouthed a couple of choice swear words before, more loudly, she said, "Then what should I do?"

"Go talk to the MT's!" Sharifaie replied. "They might be able to use an extra hand!"

Amber nodded but Sharifaie didn't see it as he had already turned away. Turning around, Amber dashed back down the way she had come from, and was just about to exit into the main corridor when –

"WATCH OUT… Amber?"

Amber looked around to see Poolsie standing behind a large ammo cart loaded up with three ASGM-10 missiles.

"Poolsie!" Amber yelled in relief and ran over to give her a hug. "Are you alright? Are you okay?"

Poolsie was covered in sweat and looked tired, but for the most part, she seemed alright. She dumbly nodded and instead, looked at Amber with a concerned look on her face.

"I'm fine," she insisted. "What happened? Are _you_ okay?"

Reflexively, Amber moved to touch the bruise on her face, but fortunately Poolsie intercepted her hands before she could.

"Probably shouldn't be touching that," Poolsie noted, and Amber realized she was right.

"I got hit in the face," Amber reported. "Damn MAC ruptured, or something like that. I'm not sure, but my station is on fire now, and Chief Carrizosa sent me down here to go help Sharifaie, but I just spoke to him and he doesn't need my help so I'm checking to see if you guys need an extra pair of hands or something."

"You just showed up in the nick of time," Poolsie admitted. "I need to get these missiles down to pod Two Bravo. Come on, help me please!"

Amber nodded and grabbed a hold of the cart. Together, the two of them began shoving the missiles down the corridor as fast as they could.

"What the heck is happening?" Amber demanded to know as the moved. As a missile tech, Poolsie's station allowed her to have a better idea of the situation outside than Amber's station would have. "This doesn't feel like things are going to plan."

"That's 'cause I don't think it is!" Poolsie admitted. "I think the Navy was counting on the Covenant doing one of two things: they would either move to help their Legions defend their landing site against the Marines, or they would hold position to defend themselves against us!"

"What happened then!?"

"They decided they wanted to attack _us_ instead! They broke formation and were moving out when we dropped out from slipspace right in front of them! We got thrown onto the defensive, and have been fighting ever since then!"

Amber couldn't believe what she was hearing. The Covenant would really break formation, essentially abandon their landing site and risk losing it, just to go on the offensive?

…well, now that Amber thought about it, somehow that actually sounded _exactly_ what the Covenant would have done. Still, that carried a lot of risks, as by leaving their positions, they stood the risk of allow the UNSC Navy to slip a task force behind their lines.

"You know if any of our battle groups are hitting the Covenant from behind?" Amber asked, but Poolsie shook her head.

"No idea – been kind of too busy to find out!"

Amber nodded in understanding. Yeah, that she could understand.

Reaching the bulkhead door that would lead into the Bravo Section missile pods, she and Poolsie did their best to turn the cart around the corner without hitting anything. Inside the room, there wasn't much to look at. Amber had been inside one of these rooms before, and they all looked the same. Missiles of various types were being feed from a magazine just below the deck, where they would be picked up by a set of claw cranes and shoved into the missile pod tubes mounted on the far side of the wall. Once each pod was loaded, a metal blast wall would slide down to allow the missiles to be safely fired.

At the moment however, things were in complete chaos the missile tech crews were working on loading and firing missiles practically as soon as they were ready. Amber had no idea what they were shooting at, but given the explosions that were shaking the _Gabrielle_ , it was probably something big.

"POOLSIE! BRING THOSE MISSILES HERE!"

Amber looked around wildly to see MT3 Vega, the head missile technician of this section, frantically gesturing from the missile pod at the very end of the compartment.

Planting her heels against the deck, Amber and Poolsie quickly pushed the cart in his direction, avoiding the moving cranes and doing their best not to get hit by any of the missiles that were getting loaded.

"Come on culeros!" Vega yelled as soon as Amber and Poolsie brought the cart to a complete stop. "Ándale, ándale!"

Amber quickly stepped aside as to not get in anyone's way as all the missile technicians present began to hurriedly unload the cart. As she did, Amber noticed a radio mounted to the bulkhead wall that was connected to the same channel the CIC was, and she couldn't help but listen in, to see if she couldn't figure out what was going on.

" _Helm, check port three one degrees,_ " Lancaster was saying. _"Don't let any of those Bandits through!"_

" _TAO, Comms: we're getting a message from_ Hermione _Actual. Captain Kwadwo is commanding us to provide missile fire support at these coordinates."_

" _Copy, I see them. Missile pods One Charlie through Five Charlie, standby to ripple fire at the established coordinates. And… fire."_

" _TAO, head's up! I'm picking up signatures of multiple Bandits approaching the_ Hermione _from direction eight three seven, thirty degrees up!"_

" _Helm, come about port, all engines ahead, flank! Move to intercept: we can't allow them to get through!"_

"Hey! MT3 Vega!" Amber yelled. "I thought we were withdrawing for repairs!?"

"So did I!" Vega admitted. "But I guess a couple of Covenant warships broke contact and headed down to the surface to help out. Admiral Amarchih wants us to engage the rest, make sure no one else tries to do the same – hey! Terrazas! WATCH WHERE YOU'RE SWINGING THAT! ¡Hijo de puta, nunca piensas!"

As Vega turned away to go yell at his crew, Amber couldn't help but shiver. A couple of ships had broken through and were on their way to the surface. Well, she didn't know what a 'couple of ships,' entailed, but either way, it wasn't good news for the ground forces. She could only hope, for their sake, the Air Force was up to the task of stopping them as it sounded like the Navy had their hands full.

"Amber! We got to go back and get more missiles! Come on!"

 **XXXXX**

 **Thracia Province, Actium  
May 7, 2545  
0926**

 **Zelda**

" _Covenant ships have broken through!"_

Zelda barely paid any attention to the call from Organ as he focused on pushing his Broadsword as fast as it could go in the direction of the city.

" _We got two_ CRS _-class light cruisers making their way down from orbit,"_ Organ continued. _"Each supported by at least three squadrons of fighters each. One is headed for the city, the other is headed south. All available aircraft, respond!"_

" _This is Omega Flight,"_ Zelda heard Bellum announce over the radio. _"We're en route!"_

" _Copy that Omega, I'm picking up on your tags. Divert to heading one four five; your objective is to engage and destroy Covenant cruiser designated '4-Charlie.' Destroy that ship, and do not let it get to the ground!"_

Zelda quickly glanced at his HUD to figure out which cruiser was target 4-Charlie: it was the one headed for the city. Damn. He hated fighting over cities.

" _Organ, Omega: wilco. Time to target: seven mikes."_

"Man, what the hell!?" Zelda demanded as soon as he heard Bellum click off her radio. "I thought the goddamn Navy was supposed to be keeping these guys back, but this is the second time in two days they've let Covies ships slip past them!"

" _Hey, at least it's just two ships and not an entire invasion force this time,"_ Odessa pointed out.

"Two ships, _**so far**_ **.** "

" _True,"_ Odessa allowed. _"But hey, at least they're coming down in waves, makes it easier to handle. Unless you're telling me you can't handle a couple of measly ships?"_

"It's not that I _can't,_ " Zelda snapped. "Maybe it's just that I don't want to. You ever think about that? Point is, Navy shouldn't be letting ships through and if they do, then ODC shouldn't either. And if they are, well, then, they both suck at their jobs."

" _Guys, enough,"_ Bellum snapped. _"Whatever the Navy is or isn't doing, it doesn't matter. We've got our position, we've got our target - we're rolling in hot. Stay close to your wing mate, watch your backs, and let's do this, got it?"_

" _Copy." "Copy." "Got it."_

"Yeah, sure, why not," Zelda reluctantly replied.

" _Time to target: three minutes,"_ was all Odessa said.

Zelda glanced forward where, in the distance on the horizon, a small glowing dot had been steadily growing bigger and bigger by the second.

Relatively speaking, _CRS_ -class light cruisers were small ships. Roughly three hundred meters in length, _CRS_ were tiny, even by UNSC standards. But of course, given the technology disparity between the two sides, it didn't matter how big these cruisers were, they were still packed to the brim with all sorts of weapons. Plus, three hundred meters in space looked far different from three hundred meters in atmo.

As they drew closer, the massive bulk of the ship's hull began to take shape, and Zelda could begin to get a sense of just how big the ship really was. At the moment, the entire ship was wreathed in flames as it made its rapid descent through the atmosphere, but it wouldn't be long before the cruiser slowed down enough to the point it could begin to deploy its weapons. Zelda and his squadron mates had to stop that ship before it reached that point.

" _Leader, this is 12,"_ Skeeter suddenly said. _"Be advised, I'm getting a reading: the shields on that thing are still up!"_

" _I know,"_ Bellum grimly replied. _"Command is routing a number of Shortsword bombers in this direction. They're gonna lay down the hate, hopefully hit that thing with enough bombs, they can disable the shields to the point a bunch of ground and sea based anti-ship missiles will knock it out of the sky. Our job is to clear the flies first, so our bombers can get close."_

Zelda glanced at his HUD at all the "flies," aka, all the Covenant fighters that were swarming around the cruiser. His computer counted at least thirty-one of them and even as he watched, a good number of them began turning in the direction of the incoming Broadswords.

" _WARNING: INCOMING FIGHTERS."_

" _Alright guys, this is it!"_ Bellum declared. _"Break into individual sections, and get ready for a fight! Good luck!"_

Zelda merely grinned to himself as he began selecting his first target. This was where they separated the rock stars from the groupies.

" _I got tone!"_

" _You're weapons free!"_

"Fox one!"

Zelda lazily thumbed his weapon release button and as a green light appeared on his HUD, indicating a successful detachment, watched as his missile join with several others and speed off down range.

As expected, his target, a Covenant Banshee, immediately deployed countermeasures, causing his missile to veer off course, however Zelda was quick to fire off another missile, and then another one. The Banshee was able to destroy the first missile with its plasma cannons, however the second one was able to make it through, zipping right over the Banshee and exploding, showering the vehicle with shrapnel.

Surprisingly, the Banshee managed to survive, however Zelda could see smoke and flames leaping from the various holes in its hull, and the Banshee immediately broke contact and started to head back in the direction of the cruiser. Zelda grinned to himself as he began lining up his crosshairs.

" _WARNING: INCOMING MISSILE."_

"Chaff!" Zelda spat out as he threw his fighter into a loop as he tried to disperse his countermeasures in a wide of an area as possible.

He glanced over his shoulder to see the fuel rod cannon come streaking in from his right, chasing after a couple of his chaff, and as it harmlessly exploded some distance away, Zelda banked _hard_ to the right in order to attack the Covie that had dared fired on him head on.

 _ **FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ**_

Plasma bolts began exploding all around him as the Banshee simply opened up on Zelda with everything it had, and Zelda threw his Broadsword into a spin, doing his best to maintain as small of a profile as he could while he lined up his crosshairs. The distance between the two aircraft began to rapidly close as both pilots sped right at each other, neither willing to give way.

Zelda's crosshairs briefly flashed red, and that was all he needed.

"Fox one!" he declared, pulling the trigger and as he felt the missile detaching from the rails, he switched over to his main gun. "Guns, guns, guns!"

 _ **BOOMBOOMBOOM!**_

Tracer rounds went streaking just under the incoming Banshee, each round briefly illuminating the underside of the Covie's hull as Zelda walked his fire up, trying to cajole the Banshee into gaining altitude where it would have a higher chance of flying straight into his missile. Surprisingly, the Covie pilot didn't take the bait. Instead, the pilot released a number of countermeasures, then somehow managed to throw its Banshee into a dive between one of the gaps in Zelda's barrage.

 _ **SWOOSHHH!**_

Zelda inverted his fighter in time to see the Banshee shooting by underneath him at supersonic speeds!

"Oh no you don't!" Zelda yelled, yanking back on his stick, hard. His Broadsword immediately went nose up as it flared, and Zelda grunted in pain as the sudden increase in surface area caused his fighter to abruptly go from supersonic to practically nothing.

Throwing his bird into a spin, Zelda jammed his stick forward and bringing the nose of his bird back down, and found himself facing in the exact direction he had just come from, with the Banshee he had just been fighting against speeding off into the distance.

Igniting his afterburners in an effort to regain his speed, Zelda took off after him.

"There you go. Thought you could get away, huh?" Zelda taunted as he began tracking the Banshee with his crosshairs.

The Banshee had clearly picked up on his presence because it immediately began conducting all sorts of evasive maneuvers, as well as activating practically all of it's countermeasures in an effort to juke Zelda's aim, but Zelda was able to match the Banshee move for move. All the while, Zelda continued to chase the Banshee with his crosshairs, waiting for that perfect shot.

"Come on," he muttered to himself. "Almost there…"

Without warning, the Banshee abruptly stopped releasing it's countermeasures. Whether it was because the Banshee had run out or they were on cool down, Zelda didn't know but he didn't hesitate: "Fox one!"

His cockpit window was briefly covered in smoke as Zelda accidently flew through the contrail of his missile, but he was able to quickly get out of the way in time to see his missile go chasing after the Banshee. The Banshee began looping and spinning in an effort to evade the incoming projectile, and for a moment there it almost appeared as if the Banshee would actually get away when –

 _ **BOOMBOOMBOOM!**_

Zelda jumped as a series of autocannon shells that were distinctly _not_ from his fighter speed off downrange. The burst just barely missed the Banshee, with only one round slightly clipping the edge of the Banshee's right stabilizer, but it distracted the pilot long enough for Zelda's missile to catch up.

 _ **BOOM**_

The Banshee exploded in a small puff of smoke, sending debris tumbling down to the surface, all of which Zelda was easily able to dodge by flying over the wreck. As he did, Zelda glancing over his shoulder to see who had fired that last autocannon burst that had almost taken his kill, only to find –

"Oh, it's only you," he announced.

" _Of course it's me,"_ Odessa replied, sounding amused. _"Who the hell else would it be?"_

"Just didn't think you would have been able to keep up with all my maneuverings, with you being an old man and everything," Zelda casually replied as he banked and headed back in the direction of the cruiser.

" _WARNING: INCOMING MISSILE."_

" _What are you talking about: there was nothing fancy about those maneuvers,"_ Odessa sneered as, in the background, Zelda could hear him popping chaff. _"And who are you calling old? You're the same age as me!"_

Zelda grinned, but wasn't given the opportunity to reply as three Banshees came screaming in, cannons blazing, forcing Zelda to evade.

He threw himself into a barrel roll, firing off a missile as he did. The missile missed, but it did cause one of the Banshees to break off, making the fight just a bit easier to deal with. Plasma streaked by his canopy, causing Zelda to loop around before throwing himself into a dive.

Glancing over his shoulder, Zelda was a bit startled to see none of the Banshees in pursuit; rather, both Covie pilots had decided to go after Odessa instead.

"I don't know whether I should be insulted or amused," Zelda commented out loud as he banked around and began to rapidly climb. "But either way, you guys are going to pay for ignoring me."

Zelda pressed down on his accelerator stick, and watched as the numbers on his altimeter rapidly climb. He wanted to get as close to the Banshees as possible to ensure there was less of a chance of him missing, but the Banshees clearly saw him coming as they immediately broke off pursuit of Odessa in order to evade.

"Fox one. Guns!"

Zelda snap fired a missile, then hurriedly unloaded a burst of cannon fire in the direction the Banshee would most likely go to evade. Sure enough, he watched as the Banshee jerk to the right while releasing a series of countermeasures, causing his missile to miss, only for the Banshee to fly right into Zelda's burst of cannon fire. The heavy caliber rounds easily chewed through the lightly armored Banshee, which disintegrated into a blue ball of fire.

Behind his mask, Zelda smiled as he moved his crosshairs to target the other Banshee.

" _ZELDA, ON YOUR SIX!"_

The shout came at the same time Zelda's proximity alarms went off, and he instinctively threw himself into a shape loop to the left. And not a moment too soon as a Seraph fighter came barreling through the space he was just occupying a moment before, being pursued by both Omegas 3 and 9.

As the entire party rocketed past, Zelda's radio automatically began picking up on the chatter between Omega 3 and 9.

" _Keep at it! Don't let that sonabitch out of your sight!"_ JT, Omega-3, was saying.

" _I'm trying!"_ 303, Omega-9 protested. _"But these things are built like tanks, especially with their shields! Dammit, why won't you just die already!?"_

Deciding that meant they needed his help, Zelda banked and took off after them, firing his afterburners in order to catch up.

As he drew near, Zelda could see that 303 was in front, unloading his main cannon into the Seraph, while JT was hanging back just a bit, firing off the occasional missile. Unfortunately, between the shields and their countermeasures, the Seraph was able to resist almost everything the two of them were throwing at it, and Zelda knew if both 303 and JT tried to keep this up, they would run out of ammo.

Zelda armed a couple of missiles and began lining up his shot, when he noticed the Seraph's shields were beginning to flicker. If he could just time this right…

The Seraph's shields abruptly failed.

" _Ha! Shields are down! 3, TAKE THE SHOT!"_ 303 urged.

Zelda fired and watched as two missile tumble out from the bottom of his Broadsword and launch themselves in the direction of the Seraph. The Seraph attempted to evade, but because Seraphs were built like a tank, they had a tendency to maneuver like one and thus the Covie pilot couldn't do anything as Zelda's missiles slammed into the cockpit area, causing flames to shoot out. Immediately the Seraph began it's death spiral down to the earth.

" _What the – ZELDA!? Where the hell did you come from!? And what's with stealing our kill?"_

"Hey, what can I say? You snooze, you lose," Zelda cockily said. He could hear 303 growling.

" _We HAD that!"_

"Clearly," Zelda replied, not even bothering to try and hide his sarcasm.

" _Knock it off you two – save that shit for when we're back on the ground,"_ JT snapped. _"We got to focus on that cruiser. 6, where the hell is your wing mate?"_

" _WARNING: COLLISION ALERT."_

Zelda immediately rolled to the side but before anything could happen -

 _ **BOOM!**_

The second Seraph that was barreling towards them abruptly exploded as a series of missiles struck it. Zelda's sensors pinged as he registered a friendly Broadsword joining their formation.

" _Really? Three of you flying together, and not one of you saw that coming?"_ Odessa exclaimed. _"I'll admit: I'm a bit disappointed."_

" _Good kill, 5,"_ JT said. _"Thanks."_

" _Yeah, thanks for the backup Odessa,"_ 303 quickly added.

There a moment of silence, and Zelda could practically feel everyone's eyes on him.

"What?" he protested. "I don't have anything to say."

He could hear Odessa snort.

" _Whatever,"_ he said. _"Like 3 said, we got to refocus our efforts on that cruiser. Where are the bombers?"_

" _Any UNSC call signs on this net: this is Napoleon Squadron inbound on a bombing run on target 4-Charlie. Requesting support, over."_

" _How 'bout that,"_ JT commented. _"Guess it's true what they say: 'ask, and ye shall receive.'"_

"That's never worked for me," Zelda grumbled.

" _That's 'cause you're a fucking asshole, Zelda."_

" _Napoleon, this is Omega Flight,"_ Odessa said, cutting Zelda's response off. _"We read you loud and clear. We're inbound, your location, thirty seconds."_

" _Copy. We'll wait for you."_

" _Alright guys: follow me!"_ Odessa commanded before banking and heading back in the direction of the cruiser.

Zelda turned to follow him and as he did, he was finally able to see how the battle was progressing so far. The cruiser was finally low enough in the atmosphere it's hull was no longer being lit up by the friction. Surrounding the cruiser were swarms of fighters, as both sides did their best to gain and advantage over one another. Zelda was reminded of the mass fighter melee he and his squadron had participated last night, only now it would appear the roles had been reversed: it was the UNSC attacking an enemy warship, with the Covenant defending. However, unlike the UNSC last night, Zelda was determined to make sure the Covenant lost their ship.

" _Anyone see where the hell these bombers are?"_ Odessa asked and Zelda could hear him shuffling around in his seat, looking around.

" _There – I got em!"_ 303 triumphantly declared. _"Our three, about forty degrees down, maybe five hundred meters away!"_

Zelda glanced in the direction 303 had said and spotted seven B-65 Shortsword bombers, casually flying through the air.

Coming in at about twice the size and mass of a Broadsword fighter, Shortsword's were nowhere near as fast or maneuverable as Zelda and his buddies were. That being said, Shortswords weren't entirely helpless and as Zelda watched, one of the Shortswords managed to blow a Banshee away with it's bow mounted M955 30mm rotary cannon. Still, burdened with all sorts of ordnance, those bombers would need help if they wanted to get close enough to the cruiser to do some damage.

" _Shortsword squadron in a holding pattern in sector one seven: is that you Napoleon?"_ Odessa asked. _"You got four Broadswords on approach from your eleven, coming from above. That's us. You have eyes on?"_

" _Rog. We got eyes on you."_

" _What sort of payloads are you guys carrying?"_

" _Each one of us is carrying one GBU-187 bomb."_

Zelda couldn't help but automatically let out a low whistle at that. GBU-187, or "MOAB" as they were usually called in tribute to the bomb of the same name that had been used by Earth air forces at the start of the millennium, were the largest and most powerful non-nuclear bombs the UNSC Air Force had in their arsenal. With each individual bomb weighing in at about ninety eight thousand kilograms, of which roughly eight and a half tonnes was explosives, they were extremely versatile weapons in that they could essentially reproduce the destructive affects of nuclear and MACs weapons, without having to face the same physical and political repercussions.

" _Yeah, I know, right?"_ Napoleon suddenly said, and with a start, Zelda realized he had actually whistled over the radio. _"That ought to rattle the Covenant's skulls a bit, you think? Problem is, is getting close because right now, we're weighed down more than my wife when she pregnant with the triplets."_

" _Don't worry, we'll get you in close,"_ Odessa assured them. _"We'll break up into individual flights; makes us a smaller target, plus then we'll be able to vector in from different angles. One Broadsword per two Shortswords, though one of us is going to only cover one. Zelda, you think you can handle two bombers?"_

Zelda rolled his eyes. "Do you really need to ask?"

He could hear Odessa shrugging.

" _Just checking,_ " he glibly replied. _"303, what about you?"_

" _I can handle it,"_ 303 immediately replied.

" _Alright then. JT, you're the lucky SOB."_

" _Feel like I should be insulted, but fuck it: I like taking things a bit easier,"_ JT unabashedly declared.

" _Good. Napoleon, Omega Flight: we're good on our end. I'm marking each plane, so assign whoever you see fit."_

" _Copy. Napoleon-3 and 8, go with Omega-9. 5 and 9, go with Omega-6. Leader and 4 will be with Omega-5, Sparky, go with Omega-3. Everyone understood?"_

A chorus of " _copy"_ responded to Napoleon Leader as Zelda began tapping his foot against the floor.

"Come on guys," he impatiently urged. "Let's go, let's do this."

" _Alright, I just talked to AWACS: Organ has got individual vectors for us,"_ Odessa declared. _"He's going to get most of the other squadrons to clear the way for us, but we're still going to have that AA on the cruiser to worry. Once payload has been delivered, all planes will rendezvous at this waypoint here. Alright, that's it, move it out!"_

Zelda immediately looked around for his two bombers. He spotted them flying nearby with the holographic words "Napoleon-5" and "Napolean-9" floating over them.

"Hey, Bombers!" Zelda yelled at them over the general channel. "Try and keep up!"

" _Yeah, fuck you too, buddy,"_ one of the bombers immediately retorted, and Zelda smirked to himself. Bomber pilots only _wished_ they could be fighter pilots.

Waiting just long enough for his two Shortswords to fall in line, Zelda took off, following along the designated route the AWACS had given him. The route had him passing over the cruiser's engines, which was a bit disappointing: there was less AA there than any other place, and Zelda had been hoping for a challenge.

Although, now that he thought of it, the cruiser's pulse lasers AA turrets weren't even firing at all, and hadn't been since they first entered the atmosphere.

" _Hey, anyone else notice this thing really seems to be booking it for the surface?"_ one of the Napoleon pilots observed.

"Yeah, they don't seem that interested in sticking around for a fight," Zelda noted.

" _Must be trying to do a supply run for the troops on the ground,"_ Odessa theorized.

"Well, shit. If that's the case, why don't we let it?" Zelda suggested. "They got to lower the shields in order to that – we can just wait for the moment, _then_ blow the shit out of them.

" _We do that though, we run the risk of the ground forces taking a lot of damage,"_ JT immediately pointed out.

"So? Why do you care?" Zelda callously replied.

" _Maybe… because up until a few years ago, I_ _ **was**_ _one of those guys on the ground?"_

Zelda started to laugh, but then stopped when he noticed no one else was following suit."Wait, really?"

" _Zelda, did you just join this squadron like, two hours ago!?"_ Odessa exclaimed. _"You do know that JT was a JTAC qualified TACP before he became a pilot, right?"_

"Well, how the fuck was I supposed to know that!?" Zelda protested.

" _You never wondered where I got my call sign from?"_ JT asked, sounding highly amused. _"It certainly wasn't from my name: there's no 'J' or 'T' in the name 'Lincoln Windsor.'"_

Zelda had to admit, he never had thought about it.

" _Omega-6, head's up! We got incoming Banshees!"_ one of the Napoleons suddenly warned.

Zelda glanced around and spotted two Banshees diving down on them from above.

"Alright guys, let's go this!" Zelda declared. "Stay on my ass, and I'll clear the way!"

" _Roger, on you!"_

Zelda took a deep breath, and then let it out slowly. "Let's go!"

With that, Zelda thumbed his afterburners and launched himself in the direction of the incoming Banshees. The Covies noticed his approach and promptly opened up with their autocannons and fuel rods.

"Chaff," Zelda spat as he deftly maneuvered past the incoming plasma. Arming two missiles, he lobbed them at the Banshee on the right before rapidly switching his crosshairs over to the one on the left and opening up with his cannons. "Guns!"

The front of his Broadsword became a blaze of fire as it spat death in the direction of the incoming. None of Zelda's return fire actually hit as both Banshees deftly maneuvered out of the way, however the good thing was that in order to do so, both Banshees had to stop firing.

Zelda gripped his stick just a bit tighter as the distance between the two forces rapidly began to close.

 _SWOOSH! SWOOSH!_

Zelda's Broadsword shook slightly as the Banshees whipped by over the UNSC forces at tops speeds and, glancing at his rear scopes, Zelda could see both Banshees spiraling upwards as they climbed in order to turn around and give pursuit. He quickly made a decision.

"You two still with me?" Zelda asked over the radio.

" _Copy!" "A-firm."_

"Looks like we're about to have a couple of clingy ex-girlfriends who don't know when to let go!" Zelda yelled, eyes glued on his rear scopes. "You two push onto the objective, I'll deal with them! On my mark, I want you to split. You ready?"

" _Yes!"_

"MARK!"

Zelda extended his air brakes just as the two Shortswords trailing behind him split outwards. The rapid deceleration caused Zelda to whip by in the space between and, using the drag to his advantage, Zelda was able to do a one eighty flip backwards and found himself facing the Banshees once more.

Hurriedly lowering his air brakes, Zelda jammed down on his stick and took off.

" _WARNING: INCOMING MISSILE."_

Zelda ignored the warning as he continued to speed towards the Banshees. Both Banshees promptly open fired with their cannons, causing Zelda to throw his Broadsword into a spin, even as the fuel rod continued to close the distance.

"Come on, come on!" he frantically muttered to himself.

" _WARNING, WARNING."_

"I know! Shut up!"

" _WARNING – "_

At the last possible second, just as the fuel rod was about to hit, Zelda jammed his stick forward, throwing himself into a dive. The fuel rod exploded above due to it's proximity to his fighter, but Zelda was long gone by then and as a result, all the explosion did was rock his plane.

Glancing behind him, he spotted the two Banshees whipping by as they picked up on the trail of the two Shortswords once more. Zelda grinned to himself.

Yanking back on his stick, Zelda aborted his dive. Angling his nose up, he quickly began to climb. His engines screamed in protest at being treated in such a manner, and Zelda knew he was going to be getting an earful from his maintenance crew later that evening when he was finally able to set down, but nevertheless Zelda quickly threw himself into a loop and found himself behind the Banshees.

Both Covie pilots were pushing their birds hard in order to try and catch up to the Shortswords and as a result, neither of them were quite able to react as Zelda was instantly able to obtain a lock on both of them and fire.

"Fox one!"

Four missiles departed his rails and rocketed down range. Ignoring the two explosions that lit up the sky once more, Zelda glanced around, trying to find his escortees, and found them not too far away, making a beeline for the cruiser. He quickly fell in line behind them.

" _Omega-6: you good?"_ one of the bombers asked before Zelda could say a word.

"Hell yeah, I'm good," Zelda confidently replied. "You're talking to the best pilot on the colony after all, baby."

" _That's… not what we're were asking. Fucking fighter jockeys, man."_

Zelda laughed, then quickly sobered up. "Time to target?"

" _Three minutes!"_

Zelda looked forward where the massive bulk of the cruiser was beginning to fill his cockpit canopy. The ship still wasn't firing and Zelda still wasn't sure why that was, but at this point, he didn't really care.

" _WARNING: INCOMING PROJECTILE."_

"FLARES!"

Zelda threw himself into a barrel roll to the right as a couple of purple needles came flying in. For a moment, he thought the needles would hit, but at the very last second, they abruptly turned to chase after his flares. Glancing around, he spotted a Covenant Type-29 "Vampire" closing in from behind.

"Watch out Napoleons!" he yelled. "We got a Vampire, pushing our six!"

" _Shit!"_

Zelda jerked his fighter to the left, then rapidly jerked it back to the right as the Vampire quickly roared into position behind him. He could see the plane's heavy needle cannon starting to glow brighter, before it abruptly open fired.

 _ **FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ!**_

Purple needles began exploding all around him, showering him with miniature crystal shards. By themselves, the shards weren't able to do much, but after some time, they would begin to add up. However, that wasn't even Zelda's biggest problem.

Zelda rapidly began juking all over the place, trying to make sure the Covenant pilot wouldn't be able to obtain a solid lock on him because if he did, then Zelda was screwed.

" _Omega-6: we're taking fire up here!"_ one of the Napoleons yelled.

"Yeah, I know!" Zelda irritably yelled. "You two keep pushing that objective – I'm gonna break off and deal with this fucker!"

" _You can't do that!"_ one of the Napoleons blurted out.

"Why the fuck not?"

" _Those are needles that fucker is firing! Without your heat signature to confuse those sensors, those needles will zero in on our engines in seconds!"_

Zelda silently swore as he realized the bombers were right. At the same time, he couldn't just _not_ do anything…

Growling, Zelda whipped around in an aileron roll. Given that unlike plasma cannons, needle cannons were actually feed from a magazine and thus had a limited reserve of ammo, his best bet was just to try and get the Vampire to run out of ammo.

He just needed to survive until that point…

 _ **BANG!**_ _Beepbeepbeep!_

The entire Broadsword rocked as something exploded, causing Zelda's instrument panel to light up and all sorts of alarms to begin blaring.

"Shit!" Zelda spat as he realized his lift fan, which was essential for his fighter's ability to lift-off and land vertically, had just taken a hit. "Come on, give me a fucking break you asshole!"

 _SWOOSH KABOOM!_

The sound of a missile exploding behind him caused Zelda to whip around in time to see the Vampire peeling off, being chased by another two missiles that originated from above. Looking skyward, Zelda spotted two Broadsword plummeting towards him.

" _Omega-6, this is Leader,"_ Bellum announced. _"12 and I will deal with the Vamp; get those bombers on target."_

"Dude, where the fuck have you been?" Zelda couldn't help but exclaim.

" _Worry about that later; for now, focus!"_

Zelda watched as Bellum and Skeeter roared by in pursuit of the Vampire, before glancing around for more targets. Aside from the cruiser that was looming directly in front of him, he couldn't see anyone else.

"I think we're free and in the clear!"

" _Copy. Thirty seconds to bombing run. Opening bomb bay doors now."_

Zelda watched as the bay doors on both bombers swiftly opened, and he could just barely make out the sight of the massive cylindrical form of the MOABs sitting inside the bomb bays.

" _Doors open,"_ one of the Napoleons reported. _"No movement from the target just – wait, hang on; I'm getting a signal."_

 _ **BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM!**_

The skies around the UNSC forces abruptly lit up as the pulse laser turrets on the cruiser unexpectedly started firing!

" _AA went live!"_

"No shit!" Zelda yelped. "Evade, evade!"

Before anyone could react though, there was a massive explosion as one of the Shortswords took a direct shot to their left engine, which instantly burst into flames.

" _This is Napoleon-5: I'm hit, I'm hit!"_ the Shortsword pilot announced in a surprisingly calm voice. _"Controls are – barely responding."_

" _Break off the attack, 5. Peel off!"_ the other bomber urged.

" _Negative, I think I can handle it!"_

"Napoleon-5, that was a pretty bad hit. I'm looking at your engine now: it's completely on fire!" Zelda warned. "Recommend you break off, now!"

" _No, it's alright! I can handle it!"_

 _Boom!_

There was another small explosion and Zelda hastily jerked to the side as apiece of metal ripped off the Shortsword and came hurtling his way. "You just lost your stabilizer!"

" _I'm good, I'm still good!"_ 5 insisted but even over the radio, Zelda could hear all sorts of alarms going off inside his cockpit.

" _Don't be an idiot, 5, you're not the only one aboard that plane! You still got three other souls with you! Peel off, NOW!"_

" _No, I can still – "_

Without warning, the entire abruptly exploded, causing the entire left wing to shear off.

"Holy shit!" Zelda yelped as the Shortsword began it's death spiral back down to earth.

" _Mayday, mayday, mayday, we're going down!"_

" _Eject, Williams, EJECT!"_

" _We're – "_

The Shortsword promptly disintegrated.

" _Napoleon-5, do you read? Napoleon-5, do you copy!?"_

"Napoleon-5 is gone, dude!" Zelda snapped. "You got to drop that fucking bomb and let's get out of here!"

" _Need you to clear the way, Omega!"_

Zelda looked forward. The pulse laser turrets had turned to engage a flight of Wombats that had been passing by after hitting Napoleon-5, but now they were turning back in his direction. He hurriedly armed a series of missiles and began locking onto all the turrets within range.

"Come on, come on," he muttered, as he carefully monitored the shield strength of the cruiser. There would be a brief half second where the Covenant would have to lower their shields in order to fire, and he had to catch that window otherwise he was dead. "Come on!"

In front of him, he could see the turrets had finished deploying and were starting to swivel in his direction. Their muscles began to glow when –

"That's it! Fox one!"

Zelda fired, and six missiles departed from the underside of his fighter and began speeding towards each turret. The missiles speed towards the shield and for a brief moment, Zelda had thought he had mistimed it, but then they passed right through.

 _ **BOOMBOOMBOOM!**_

A series of explosions ripped across the top of the cruiser's hull, and the turrets went dead.

"Drop the fucking payload and let's go!"

" _Copy! Ordnance is off the rails and… BOMBS AWAY, BOMBS AWAY, BOMBS AWAY!"_

Zelda hastily yanked back on his stick and peeled away, trying to do his best to put enough distance between him and the bomb. Behind him, the bomb continued its journey towards the cruiser. Then -

There was a brilliant bright light, one so intense, Zelda almost thought a nuke had gone off as the MOAB exploded against the shield. A massive shockwave rapidly spread out from the center of the explosions, sending ripples across the entire length of the shield, like waves on a sea.

Of course, that hadn't been the only bomb to have exploded at that very moment, and looking around, Zelda could see five other identical explosions ripping through the top of the cruiser. The cruiser's energy shield visibly began torqueing, before it abruptly snapped.

" _Shield is down! I say again, target 4-Charlie's shields are down! All sea and air batteries:_ _ **FIRE!"**_

Zelda's radar lit up with friendly contacts like streetlights in a city at night, and he looked around to see all sorts of contrails filling the air: anti-ship missiles fired from Air Force Longswords in a holding pattern just over the horizon in the west, as well as submarine launched ballistic missiles fired from even further away in the east.

The cruiser's remaining pulse laser turrets instantly came to life and began shooting down the incoming missiles, but there were just so many of them, inevitably some of them made it through.

 _ **KABOOM!**_

There was another brilliant flash of light as the cruiser was struck head on by a missile, knocking even more turrets offline.

 _ **KABOOM! KABOOM!**_

More and more missiles began slamming into the cruiser, ripping right through it's armor and tearing it's superstructure to shreds. Explosions began rippling across the entire hull and a ton of ejection pods were getting launched before there was a sudden flash, and the entire ship simply exploded, sending a massive bubble of compressed air in all directions.

Zelda let out a huge sigh of relief as he watched the remains plummet to the ground below, but he didn't allow himself to relax. While this ship had just been destroyed, there was still one other to worry about.

" _All call signs, this is Organ Leader: all aircraft, turning to heading one six zero, south southeast."_

" _Let's take out the remaining ship."_

 **XXXXX**

" **Southern Front", Actium  
May 7, 2545  
1002**

 **Marcus**

" _The first ship has been destroyed! All units, I say again: the first ship has been – "_

"Marcus, LOOK OUT!"

Marcus jerked the steering wheel to the side, hard, as a fuel rod cannon came screaming in and slammed into the road, blowing a small crater into the surface. Seconds later, two Banshees came roaring in, whipping by overhead, flying less than twenty meters over the top of the highway.

The sound of machine gun fire followed them as Orlović unloaded on the Banshees, doing his best to try and shoot them down, but the Banshees continued to fly by, undeterred.

 _ **BRRRRRTTTTT!**_

A Warthog AA located on the other side of the sound wall unexpectedly opened up, tearing one of the Banshees into shreds. The Banshee burst into flames as it started to dissolve, but the aircraft held together long enough for the alien pilot to fly his crippled fighter straight into the Warthog, which didn't have time to move out of the way.

 _BOOM!_

"Ah, JESUS!"

Marcus couldn't prevent the scream from slipping out from between his lips as the Banshee and Warthog exploded, showering the highway with debris, which included one black chunk that bounced off their windshield, leaving a nasty looking stain that also partially blocked their view.

"Wipers! Clean that off!" Dresden demanded and Marcus hastily activated his windshield wipers. "Billy! You alright!?"

"I NEED ANOTHER BOX OF AMMO!"

Marcus could hear Dresden letting out a loud grunt as he reached behind their seats to grab another box of ammo. With one hand, he passed it on to Orlović while the other, he reached out and grabbed the radio.

"Rastafari, this is Voodoo-6," he announced. "Say again your last, over?"

" _Voodoo, Rastafari: the first ship has been destroyed!"_

"Which ship? The one over the city or the one over the suburbs?"

" _Uh… the one over the city, I think."_

"Well, what freaking good does that do us, then?" Dresden snapped as he tossed the radio aside, sounding genuinely annoyed. "Marcus, Billy: our mission is still a go! We gotta get this anti-ship missile over to wherever it's needed, so they can take out that stupid remaining cruiser before it reaches the surface! That means, Billy, you gotta keep those fighters off of us!"

"HEY, I'M TRYING!" Orlović immediately protested. "BUT THIS THIRTY CAL JUST AIN'T CUTTING IT ANY LONGER! WE GOTTA UPGRADE OUR FIREPOWER!"

"If I could, I would! But for now, we gotta get off this damn highway," Dresden insisted. "We're too exposed here."

"THE HELL DO YOU WANT **ME** TO DO ABOUT IT?"

Dresden ignored him and instead, grabbed the radio once more. "6 Actual, this is 6-1, come in."

" _Go, 6-1!"_

"We gotta get off this damn highway; we're too exposed, over."

" _Agreed!"_ Sergeant Scott replied. _"You got a route in mind?"_

"I might. Side streets; it'll put us right through the surrounding suburbs. Its gonna be tight, hauling a huge-ass trailer like this, but hopefully with all the buildings, it makes it harder for us to get hit, over."

" _Got it. Do it. You lead the way, 6-1, rest of the convoy will follow. 6 Actual to all Voodoo-6 victors, be advised – "_

"Marcus, take this exit!"

Marcus immediately spun his wheel to the right, flinching as the sound of more Banshees passing by overhead filled the air, following by the roar of more machine gun fire.

"FUCK YOU, YOU CUNTS!" he heard Orlović screaming as he fired on them, though from the sounds of it, he didn't actually hit anything.

" _Conserve your ammo_ , Private!" Dresden barked. "Those Banshees are already buggering off, no need to try and draw their attention back to us! Keep your eyes peeled for the next flight! Marcus, as soon as we get off this ramp, keep going straight!"

"Copy!"

Marcus turned his steering around as the rig rounded the bend, only to almost drive straight into an abandoned car that was just sitting in the middle of the ramp.

"Ahh!" Marcus couldn't help but squeal as he reflexively twisted his wheel to try and avoid a collision, but Dresden grabbed a hold of it as all the weight of the trailer began to shift to one side.

"Easy!" he snapped. "Don't forget, with this missile, we're a lot more top heavy than we normally would be. Go easy on the turns, otherwise, you're gonna flip us!"

Rather than waste time apologizing, as he knew all that would serve to do was irritate Dresden, Marcus straightened his wheel and allowed the heavy HEMTT to smash into the car.

 _CRASH!_

The entire cabin shook from the collision as they plowed into the vehicle, shoving it out of the way, and Marcus winced as he spotted the front windshield of the car go flying off, but for now, he was just glad there hadn't been anyone inside.

Gunning the engine, he cleared the wreck and took off down the street.

"Keep going straight for another five klicks, then we'll make a right," Dresden commanded. "Billy! Any sign of pursuit?"

"NAH! LOOKS LIKE THE BANSHEES ARE GOING AFTER ALL THE OTHER VEHICLES ON THE HIGHWAY FOR NOW!"

"Good, let's hope it stays that way! Hey, once we get into this town, we're gonna be surrounding on all sides by buildings. I don't know if there's anymore Skirmishers around, but Billy! Keep a sharp eye out!"

"MAN, I GOTTA DO _EVERYTHING_ AROUND HERE!"

Ignoring Orlović's bitching, Dresden glancing in Marcus' direction. "Olsen: you good? How's she handling?"

"I'm definitely feeling the extra weight in the pedals," Marcus admitted. "Its affecting the steering a bit."

"Hopefully we won't have to carry this thing that much longer," Dresden said as he peaked out of his window, rifle in hand.

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Marcus decided this was as good of a time as any to voice a question that had been bothering him since they picked up the trailer.

"Hey, Sarge?"

"What is it, Marcus?" Dresden replied, not quite impatiently, but not exactly kindly either.

"Is this missile really going to be enough to destroy that cruiser?"

"Destroy? Not by itself, no. Heavily damage? Absolutely, as long as the shields are down, which hopefully the Air Force will have dealt with by the time we get there."

Marcus absentmindedly nodded in understanding as the howl of more Banshees caught his attention and he glanced out his driver side window. In the distance, he could see Banshees firing plasma at the ground, but fortunately most of it appeared to be direction towards the vehicles still stuck on the highway.

"Where the heck are all these Banshees coming from? That cruiser?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Marcus saw Dresden shaking his head. "No. _CRS_ -class cruisers carry no complement of fighters themselves; these fighters were probably sent down alongside it to make sure that ship made it to the surface intact."

"Ship sounds pretty important – what do you think its carrying, sir?"

"Probably reinforcements. How many though, who knows? Cruisers like that are warships, not troop transports, so they don't usually have the cargo space to hold too many people. But then again, who's to say the Covies didn't modify them somehow? We could be looking at anywhere between a small reinforced company of extra troops, or an entire regiment. Who knows?"

Marcus felt himself shivering in fear at that. He wasn't even fighting on the frontline, but even he knew that was the last thing they needed.

"That's why we gotta take out that ship, ASAP," Dresden added. "If we can kill most of those troops before they hit the ground, we can help save a lot of lives. Take this right!"

Taken off guard by the sudden change in topics, it took Marcus nearly a full minute to realize what Dresden had just said, but when he did, he hastily turned his wheel. Fortunately, Marcus still had the presence of mind to realize that trying to make a turn like that with the cargo they were hauling would be an extremely bad idea, especially at the speeds they were traveling, so he made sure to take the turn as wide as possible, taking advantage of the fact they were the only ones on the road. Which meant mounting the sidewalk.

 _Clang!_

The sound of metal hitting the ground reverberated down the street as Marcus carelessly hit a light pole, knocking it over.

"HOLY FUCK!" Orlović yelped as he ducked inside to avoid getting hit. "What the hell, Marcus? You trying to kill me?"

"Orlović, stop bitching and get back on your damn gun," Dresden immediately ordered. "We don't know if we're the only ones in this town, and I'd rather we don't get jumped again."

"Though, seriously Olsen?" he added as Orlović got back onto his turret, grumbling under his breath the entire time. "Just 'cause there's no civilians around, doesn't mean we gotta hit everything in sight. This ain't a video game, you know?"

"Sorry," Marcus reflexively replied, but Dresden had already turned away so he could open his window in order to point his rifle outside.

With the howl of the wind rushing in, coupled with the sound of fighting in the distance, it made it somewhat difficult to hold a conversation, so Marcus didn't even try. Instead, he turned his focus to the task at hand.

Marcus didn't recognize the area they were currently driving through, but that was hardly surprising given how far south they were. Large, one to three story shops lined both sides of the streets, painted in bright colors in order to attract the attention of various pedestrians that might have been wandering by. Numerous parallel parking spots sat in front of the stores at the edge of the sidewalks, all of which were occupied by vehicles of all different shapes and models. On the sidewalks themselves, every few meters there was either a tree pot, occupied by a small tree minus its leaves because it was winter time, or a black bench for pedestrians to sit on and rest their legs.

All in all, it looked like a rather nice town, one that almost reminded Marcus of home, aside for one thing: it was completely devoid of life. Everywhere Marcus looked, he saw the telltale signs of hasty abandonment and evacuation – store front doors left wide open, cars left running, and personal items such as strollers, bags, and half eaten food were strewn all over the place, sitting in the exact spots they had been dropped.

In some ways, it made Marcus sad, to see what had clearly been a vibrant area at one point turned into a ghost town. At the same time, Marcus couldn't help but think back to the thoughts he had yesterday and earlier this morning, about how the Covenant had ruined all of his future plans, and he was struck by a sudden realization: if this town was any example, then his life wasn't the only one the Covenant had ruined. The only difference between him and the civilians that had once lived here being, Marcus was actually in a position to make the Covenant _pay_ for their transgressions.

Marcus blinked as he found that epiphany left his head spinning, and so he was extremely glad when Dresden abruptly spoke up once more.

"Hang a left here, Marcus," he command.

"AND TRY NOT TO HIT ANOTHER FUCKING LIGHT POLE, DUDE!" Orlović demanded from above.

"Go down about ten blocks, then take a right," Dresden continued as if he hadn't been interrupted. "That'll put us back on the highway, whereupon, we'll go another three klicks, then we'll exit once more. That should put us right by the area where Battery 'E' of No 176 Air Defense Squadron is deployed."

Even as Marcus went about executing Dresden's orders, he felt a shiver go down his spine. Back onto the highway. Where the Banshees were.

Great.

"Here we go boys!" Dresden declared as Marcus began making the final turn onto the ramp that would put them back on the highway. "We're about to reenter the danger zone – stay sharp!"

Sitting on the ramp already was a single Warthog utility vehicle equipped with the standard triple barreled "Gatling" gun. As Marcus watched, the Soldier manning the gun suddenly swiveled around and opened up on a flight of Banshees passing by overhead.

"Go, Marcus, GO!" Dresden encouraged and Marcus hurriedly floored the HEMTT, trying to make it down the ramp before the Warthog started to attract return fire.

 _ **BRRRTTTTT!**_ _tink tink tink!_

The roar of the machine gun followed by the sounds of the brass casings bouncing off the HEMTT filled Marcus' ears as the convoy surged passed the Warthog. Glancing over his shoulder to make sure there was no oncoming traffic, Marcus happened to spot the Warthog also traveling forward down the ramp, keeping pace with the logistics convoy in order to not remain a stationary target as plasma began raking the road.

"COME ON YOU PRICKS!" Orlović bellowed at the top of his lungs as he opened up, adding his fire to the Warthog's. "LET'S GO!"

With brass raining down from all directions, the only thing Marcus could do was huddle down deeper in his seat and drive faster. He jumped when Dresden suddenly fired a few burst out his window, but Marcus didn't know what he was shooting at until a barrage of plasma sprayed across the road a few meters in front of them and, glancing out his window, Marcus could see a couple of Banshees pulling out of a strafing run, several hundred meters high in the air.

Without warning, one of the Banshees abruptly exploded as it was struck by a missile, causing the remaining one to veer off and go fleeing in the direction of the horizon. Seconds later, the roar of jet engines filled the air before two SkyHawks came rocketing by, in pursuit of the fleeing Banshee.

"FINALLY! WHAT THE FUCK WAS THE AIR FORCE DOING, TAKING A NAP!?" Orlović demanded to know.

"Nah, I rather they focus their attention on that damn cruiser! I mean, look at it!" Dresden yelled back, jabbing his hand forward and with a start, Marcus realized the dot which he had assumed to be nothing more than a speck of dirt on the windshield was actually steadily growing by the minute, and it was getting to the point where Marcus could begin to make out the purple colored hull. "It's getting too close! We gotta get this missile over to that battery! MARCUS!"

"On it, Sarge!" Marcus yelled as he jammed down on the accelerator and started up the exit ramp.

Leaving the highway, Marcus immediately spotted a large open field just off to his right where three massive mobile missile launchers and a mobile radar unit, all covered in camouflage netting, sat roughly a hundred and fifty meters apart. Surrounding the launchers and forming a rough perimeter, were a handful of Warthog AA vehicles, as well as at least two, HEMTT mounted M95 "Lance" turrets.

"Those are our boys!" Dresden yelled over the increasing sound of machine gun fire. "There should be a road somewhere around here; take us to that fire control vehicle in the center there, Marcus; let's figure out where this missile needs to go!"

Marcus nodded and pulled off the road. Finding a set of tire tracks that had been dug into the snow, presumably by all the vehicles currently occupying the field, Marcus headed in the direction of the radar, pulling to a stop with a loud screeching of brakes.

Dresden hurriedly removed his safety harness, but before he could get out, an Air Force officer came running up to them.

"FINALLY! Where the hell have you guys been?" the Captain demanded to know. "You know what? Never mind! Take this missile, and head to that launcher! The rest of your platoon will resupply the others!"

"Yes, sir!" Dresden yelled out, re-buckling his seatbelt. "Come on, Marcus, let's roll. Orlović! Conserve your ammo – let the Rock Apes take over! Get in here!"

Marcus jammed down on the accelerator as Orlović shimmied down from the turret.

"Shit, I'm burning through ammo fast and I don't even think I hit much," he admitted as he began digging through their ammo cans in the back seat. "We really need to upgrade, Sergeant – even if I do hit something, it hardly does shit."

"Keep an eye out for any wrecked vehicles that have a twelve point seven intact," Dresden commanded. "Doubt the armory has any, so we'll probably have to salvage some. In the meantime, let's dump this missile and get out of here."

Marcus nodded and headed towards the launcher, only to slow down when he spotted an airman running towards them, gesturing wildly at them. Popping open his door, Maris waited for the airman to catch up.

"Pull your rig alongside our launcher!" the Airman demanded. "We'll take the missile directly from your trailer, and load it into the rails!"

"You got it!"

Marcus deftly maneuvered the HEMTT into position before throwing the parking brake on. He started to unbuckle his seatbelt, but Dresden patted his shoulder.

"Hold tight," he ordered. "Air Force will handle it."

Glancing over his shoulder, Marcus spotted the missile crew scrambling over their trailer, hurriedly removing all of the tie down straps in order to move the missile, and he relented.

At first, Marcus figured the loading and unloading process wouldn't take long. After all, it only took a couple of minutes for them to get loaded. But after the first few minutes ticked by and the air force crew hadn't even finished unfurling the crane they needed, Marcus suddenly realized this entire process would probably take a lot longer time than he originally anticipated.

He wasn't the only one to notice.

"Hey, Tech Sergeant!" Dresden suddenly yelled at the Airman that originally directed them. "How long is this going to take?"

"It takes about ten minutes to reload!" the Technical Sergeant yelled.

"'Ten minutes?' You got to be fucking kidding me!" Orlović immediately exclaimed, causing the Tech Sergeant to glare at him.

"This is a very delicate procedure, Soldier!" he snapped before he suddenly looked skyward. "Shit! We got multiple flights of Banshees, inbound. They must have seen you guys pull up!"

"Where's the top cover? Where are our fighters?" Dresden demanded to know.

"Most of them are either getting reloaded, or they're working on bringing down that cruiser's shield!"

"Great," Marcus heard Dresden grumble under his breath. More loudly though, "Sergeant, there anything we can do to help speed this process up?"

"No, but you can run out ammo to the AAs! Warthog three is running low!"

With that, the Sergeant disappeared, as the howl of Banshees slowly began to fill the air.

"Damn, we're a sitting duck here," Dresden said as he hurriedly unbuckled his harness. "Gotta make sure those AAs keep firing, keep those Banshees off our backs! I'll stay here in case they need us to move or something; you two run the ammo out!"

"Got it! Come on, Marcus, let's move!"

Marcus bobbed his head as he shoved his door open and hopped out of the cab, Orlović close behind. As he shut the door, he saw Dresden shuffling over and taking his place in the driver's seat.

"Hey! Where's the ammo for the AAs!" Orlović yelled at the airmen as they ran over to the radar vehicle.

"On that pallet over there!"

The airman pointed at a pallet full of ammo cans sitting under a camo net nearby.

"Okay!"

Marcus and Orlović rushed over to the pallet as the sound of rockets launching filled Marcus' ears, and he glanced around to see a volley of missiles departing from their tubes as the Lance turrets opened up on targets in the distance.

"Man, I can't believe the Air Force is making us do their bitch work again," Orlović complained even as he grabbed a handful of cans. "Second time in two days!"

Marcus silently nodded in agreement. He, too, remembered the supply run they had done for some Air Force SAMs deployed by the airport early yesterday morning. Even though it was less than a day ago, at this point, Marcus had been through so much, it felt more like years.

This time though, Marcus was determined to do things right, one of which was to make sure he had his rifle on him just in case another Covie dropship crashed nearby. Fortunately, he had remembered to grab it from the HEMTT before he had left, so he quickly draped it around his shoulders and pulled the sling tight so that it was strapped across the front of his chest, leaving his hands free to grab two massive cans of ammo.

"Ready?" Marcus nodded. "Then let's go!"

They were just about to head out across the snow covered field when all hell abruptly broke loose as every single AA gun surrounding the field unexpectedly opened up.

 _ **BRRRTTTTBOOOMBOOM!**_

Marcus automatically glanced skyward to see Banshees fast on approach. The AA Warthogs were rapidly flooding the air with lead in an effort to deter them, but by the looks of things, the Banshees were flying _just_ outside the engagement envelope of the AAs, so they were able to avoid getting hit. Still, as long as they deterred the Banshees from getting too close, then Marcus supposed it was worth it.

"Marcus, stop gawking and _move!"_

Marcus jumped and took off after Orlović as the guns surrounding them continued to unload into the sky. However, it wasn't enough to hold back the Covenant forever.

He and Orlović were about halfway to the first gun when he began to feel the howl of an incoming Banshee against his skin, and Marcus didn't even bother waiting for confirmation: he immediately dove for cover onto the ground.

"INCOMING!"

 _ **FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ!**_

Marcus reflexively covered his head with his arms as the Banshees open fired with their cannons, raking the field with plasma and sending gobs of half-melted snow and dirt in all directions.

 _ **SWOOSH!**_

Feeling the rapid change in air pressure against his back as the Banshees rocketed by, Marcus looked up, only to see another two Banshees inbound. The lead Banshees promptly fired a fuel rod.

 _ **BOOM!**_

The ground shook as one of the Warthogs just off to their right went up as it took the fuel rod cannon directly to their hood. Marcus could see a dark object getting hurtled straight up into the air like a top, and he had a feeling that it was actually the gunner's body and not a piece of debris like he so desperately hoped it was, and the sight both simultaneously left him sick to his stomach and quaking in his boots.

He wasn't able to dwell on the feeling for long though.

"Dude! We ain't got no cover out here! We gotta go!"

Marcus took a deep breath.

"Yeah, okay! I'm right behind you!"

Without a second glance, Orlović surged to his feet and took off running. Taking a moment grab the cans, Marcus hurriedly moved to follow.

 _ **FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ!**_

The roar of plasma cannons sent Marcus diving for the ground once more, and not a moment too soon as plasma chewed up the ground all around him, leaving him soaked to the bone but by some miracle, completely unharmed. He risked looking up to see a Banshee pulling out from a strafing run, only to get struck by a missile one of the Lance turrets fired.

The missile struck the Banshee in the left stabilizer, setting it a blazing but failing to knock the aircraft out of the sky. Nevertheless, Marcus could see it losing altitude as the Covenant pilot struggled to pull away, but it was too late: at that point, the aircraft was low enough to be engaged by the Warthogs and the vehicle was quickly torn to shreds.

Seeing his opportunity, Marcus surged to his feet and took off once more, but before he could take more than a few steps –

"Olsen, LOOK OUT!"

Marcus glanced skyward and let out a loud yelp as he automatically dove to the side, just as a huge chunk from the burning Banshee came crashing down into the ground right next to him, leaving an impressive looking crater.

"Why does it feel like everyone is shooting at us!?" Marcus yelled at Orlović.

"We might be the only targets they can see!" Orlović yelled back. "We gotta get under some cover! On three, we book it for that Warthog, and we don't stop for nothing, got it?"

Marcus missed where Orlović pointed, but he nevertheless nodded in understanding.

"Alright! One, two… three!"

Marcus launched himself to his feet and just took off running, not even pausing to see if Orlović was following. All around him, all he could hear were more Banshees inbound, and the realization made him run even faster.

" _What the… not that one, you dumbass!"_

Orlović suddenly yelled over the radio and, looking around, Marcus belatedly realized Orlović had been running towards the Warthog directly in front of them, whereas Marcus had somehow gotten turned around, and was running towards the Warthog that had been just off to their left.

Feeling a sudden surge of panic at being left behind, Marcus automatically started to turn around, when a fuel rod landed in the middle of the field less than twenty meters away. The shockwave ripped through the ground, knocking Marcus flat onto his ass.

"Fuck! _Thiiisss!"_ Marcus yelled as he got up and just took off running for the Warthog he had originally been headed towards.

As he got closer, he could see two guys positioned around the Warthog just under the camo net: one manning the gun, while the other was hunched over taking shelter just behind the rear bumper of the 'Hog.

Marcus immediately headed for the second guy.

"Ammo!" he called out, completely out of breath as he dropped to the ground right next to the man. "I got ammo!"

The other man turned around and gave Marcus a look of pure shock. "You just ran across the entire open field? In the middle of an air attack?"

Marcus nodded.

"To supply ammo for a gun that didn't need it?"

It took Marcus a couple of seconds to realize what the man had said but once he did, he felt like crying. All this for nothing?

The other man must have noticed the expression on Marcus' face because he immediately said, "You know what? Never mind. We could always use more ammo. Give me that!"

Marcus gratefully handed the two cans over to the man, and dropped to his knees behind the Warthog in order to catch his breath. As the other man darted around to the other side of the Warthog, Marcus looked around. He had dropped off his ammo. Now what? Wait… was he really going to have to run _back_ across the open field!?

 _ **KABOOM!**_

A ringing noise instantly filled Marcus' ears as something exploded right in front of the Warthog, showering the entire vehicle in dirt and melt ice as well as causing it to lurch back and smack him in the back of his helmet. As he pitched forward, something heavy fell off the rear of the 'Hog and almost landed right on top of him, only narrowly missing him by a hair.

Coughing, Marcus laid there for a moment, before forcing himself to get back up. In a slight daze, he looked around the Warthog to see a fuel rod cannon projectile had exploded less than a meter in front of the vehicle, hitting the nose of the Warthog with a deluge of shrapnel. There were pockmarks all over the hood, and the windshield appeared almost as if someone had taken a shotgun to it, filling the normally bulletproof glass with needle sized holes and spider web cracks.

As Marcus gaped at the damage, the ringing in his ears slowly began to fade, only to be steadily replaced by a soft choking noise. It was also at about this time Marcus realized the Warthog's gun had stopped firing, and with a growing sense of dread, Marcus felt like he knew why.

Slowly, he glanced at the object that had fallen off the Warthog and almost landed on him a few seconds ago. Sure enough, it was the gunner.

"Oh, shit!" Marcus yelped as he scrambled over to the fallen man and started looking him over.

The man had taken a bucket full of shrapnel and plasma to the head, causing the man's face to swell up, making the man look more alien than human. Blood was oozing from his various wounds, including from one hole right in the middle of his throat, hence the choking.

However, even as Marcus stared at the man, helpless and completely lost as to what he should even do, the man abruptly went limp.

"No, no, no, sir?" Marcus said as he frantically began patting the man's shoulder. "Stay with me!"

He placed two fingers on the man's neck, using the trick Dresden had shown him a couple hours ago to figure out if someone was dead or merely unconscious, and to his alarm, he couldn't find a pulse. Desperately, Marcus hastily removed his helmet and placed his ear near the man's nose, to figure out if he could even hear the man breathing, but even that was missing.

"Oh no!" Marcus wailed. He glanced around to the side of the Warthog where the other airman was kneeling, messing around with the cans of ammo. "Hey! Sir? I think he's dead!"

The other man didn't react, and Marcus wasn't sure if it was because he couldn't hear him, so Marcus leapt to his feet and dashed over to the man.

"Sir…?" Marcus started to say as he placed his hand on the man's shoulder to try and get his attention, only for the man to bonelessly topple over. To Marcus' horror, the man had been drilled right between the eyes by a small stream of plasma, killing him instantly.

"Oh my god!" Marcus gasped as he stared into the dead man's open eyes. "Oh my god!"

He frantically looked around, trying to figure out if there was someone nearby who could help him, but these two men had been the only ones here. What was he supposed to do now, just leave? However, the Covenant attack was still ongoing and, looking back, Marcus could see the Air Force crew was still working on unloading the missile from his HEMTT. They needed more time.

But… how?

Marcus automatically looked up at the large machine gun on its mount over his head. Climbing to his feet- flinching as another something exploded nearby – he pulled himself onto the back of the Warthog and quickly checked over the gun. He was no expert, but the gun seemed to be in good working condition and was still loaded.

Could he…?

Experimentally, he grabbed the grips. The machine gun was heavier than he expected, but Marcus found he could still rotate it around with relative ease.

Feeling a bit more confident in himself, Marcus went ahead and gripped the gun more firmly, shoving his shoulders against the braces and looking around. Gun and shell fire were still filling the air, trying to knocking out the remaining Banshees, but there was definitely less of it than before, allowing the Banshees to fly relatively unimpeded. Marcus spotted one Banshee flying towards him, and he quickly swiveled around, took aim…

… and pulled the triggers.

 _ **BRRTTTT!**_

The machine gun roared to life, spitting rounds into the air at over a thousand rounds per minute! The recoil completely took Marcus by surprise, as well as the sheer noise, causing him to damn near paint a silhouette around the Banshee instead of hitting it on directly. The Banshee didn't seem to notice however, and continued to fly blithely along its chosen path, and Marcus hurriedly released the trigger in order to regain control of the massive weapon. Re-sighting his target, he fired again.

 _ **BRRRTTTT!**_

Marcus felt his entire body shake and the world beyond his narrow gun sight turned into a blur as he struggled to tame the devastating weapon. Once again, he failed to hit his target, but this time he could see his rounds coming closer and closer. Adjusting his aim, Marcus mentally prepared himself to pull the trigger once more, but unfortunately his firing had attracted the attention of someone else.

The howl of an inbound Banshee was the only warning he had and Marcus swiveled his gun around just in time to see another two Banshees open fire on him with their cannons. Without thinking, Marcus immediately held down on the trigger, sending a stream of bullets back.

 _ **BRRRTTT!FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ!**_

The Warthog's suspension let out a loud groan of protest as the entire vehicle was raked with plasma fire, but the metal gun shield mounted on the front of the gun protected Marcus from the worst of it as he laid into the trigger. The two Banshees went screaming over Marcus' head and he roughly spun his turret around to chase them, but then he immediately spotted another Banshee flying by at a much lower altitude and he rapidly switched targets.

"Die you stupid Banshees, die!" Marcus roared at the top of his lungs, watching as his tracers skip through the air just behind his target. He tried to reposition his sights to just in front of the Banshee, but the alien plane was flying just too fast for him to catch up and at any case, Marcus spotted another Banshee flying straight at him and he hurriedly switched targets.

"Come on!" he roared as he unloaded. "You want some of this!? _Aghhh!"_

 _ **FWOOZFWOOZFWOOZ!**_

With a sense of reckless courage he didn't even know he possessed, Marcus held his ground as the Banshee opened up on him with everything it had, while Marcus did the same. For a moment, it became a race to see who would give in first, Marcus or the Banshee pilot, and just when Marcus was about to lose his cool –

 _ **BOOM!**_

Heavy shells from one of the HEMTTs struck the Banshee in it's gravity pod, sending the plane spiraling out of control. Marcus swung his turret around as he tracked the Banshee on its journey to the ground, and was able to see the Banshee as it plowed into the field a couple hundred meters away and skid along the ground a few dozen meters before coming to a complete stop. It didn't explode though and, remembering what had happened yesterday, Marcus brought his gun around with a grunt and fired on the wreckage.

He could see his tracers punching right the Banshee's light armor and out the other side, where they skipped off into the distance, but Marcus didn't relent until he spotted the cockpit area bursting into flames. Satisfied, he started to turn away when the wreckage abruptly exploded!

"YEAH!" Marcus couldn't help but cheer. That was one down, but unfortunately there was plenty more where that came from.

He briefly looked at his gun to see how much ammo it had left, but unfortunately he had no idea how this thing worked and at any case, another pair of Banshees passing nearby prevented him from looking too closely.

Bringing his turret around, Marcus aimed at the lead Banshee and open fired.

"Come on!" Marcus cheered as the recoil caused his teeth to rattle and his body to shake. "Come on! Yeah!"

He could sparks flying from where his bullets were hitting, causing the Banshee to break off, but all Marcus did was switch his fire to the second one..

 _ **BRRTTTTTTTTTT!**_

Marcus just held down on the trigger. He could see the end of all three barrels of his turret beginning to glow orange, and the waves of heat rising off them were actually beginning to obscure his sightlines, but Marcus didn't let up. Not until the Banshee burst into flames.

 _ **BOOM!**_

The Banshee promptly exploded, sending debris raining down onto the ground below!

"YEAAHHH!" Marcus cheered. "TAKE THAT YOU STUPID ASSHOLES!"

Even as Marcus celebrated, he couldn't help but be a little surprised by how violent he was sounding yet, at the same time, he couldn't stop himself: there was something so exhilarating, firing such a heavy weapon and having it simply _melt_ the Covenant away.

" _All units, this is the FDC: be advised, missiles firing in five! Four!"_

Marcus jerked around and glanced in the direction of his HEMTT. By the looks of it, the Air Force crew had finally loaded their missile and was preparing to fire. Marcus could see them dashing into a small shelter nearby and slamming the door shut, and he let out a loud yelp as he leapt off the back of the Warthog and took shelter underneath. He wasn't sure he was close enough to the point he would get hit by the exhaust of the missile launch, but it wasn't something he wanted to risk.

"… _one! Missile away!"_

There was a tremendous and bone rattling roar as all three mobile missile launchers fired their newly loaded missiles. A cloud of smoke quickly blanketed the entire field, but as it began to dissipate, Marcus couldn't help himself: he peeked out from under the Warthog and watched as the missiles sped towards the massive ship that was just hanging in the air.

A couple of Banshees sped after the missiles, as if trying to intercept them, however the missiles were just travelling too fast for the fighters to catch up. Then, before Marcus even realized it, the missiles slammed into the ship.

Even from this distance, Marcus could see entire sections of the ship get torn off and go plummeting to the ground below. A huge plume of black smoke started to rise into the air, and Marcus could see the cruiser's engines flaring as the ship tried to maneuver out of the way of more incoming missiles, but it had no chance: the missile hit the cruiser dead on, knocking it out of the sky. The ship started to go plummeting to the earth, but before it could even get close, there was a brilliant blue flash.

 _Boom!_

The explosion rattled the ground and Marcus hurriedly climbed to his feet in order to watch the remains of the ship go crashing into the ground with a self-satisfied smile on his face. Maybe he didn't actually do much, but he couldn't help but feel like he had contributed to the destruction of that ship.

 _BwAAP!_

Marcus jumped at the sound of the horn behind him, and he whirled around to see Dresden and Orlović pulling up in the HEMTT behind him.

"Marcus!" Dresden yelled. "Get in! We gotta go!"

Marcus glanced around. The bodies of the former Warthog crew were still lying on the ground beside him.

"But what about these guys?" he protested.

Before Dresden could say anything, a Warthog ambulance suddenly pulled up aside the HEMTT, and a couple of medics hopped out and ran past Marcus in order to attend to the bodies lying on the ground.

Satisfied the dead were being treated appropriately, Marcus dashed over to the HEMTT and hopped into the passenger seat. As they took off in the direction of the highway, Dresden declared, "Saw what you did, Private. Good work with the turret."

"Thank you, sir," Marcus beamed, though at the reminder of the turret, he quickly glanced outside however it would have appeared at surviving Banshees had opted to retreat in the face of the loss of their ship. "Um… where are we going?"

"Back to base to get more supplies," Dresden distractedly replied.

"But…" Marcus quietly protested. "We destroyed the ship. Didn't we?"

Dresden's face was drawn and grim. "Not before they were about to unload most of their cargo. Plus, those Zoomies were targeting the cruiser's engines, and not their reactor core like they should have: a lot of the Covenant crew would have had time to make it to escape pods or survived the crash."

"With that influx of reinforcements, we're _definitely_ going to have our work cut out for us"

And with that grim pronouncement, the team head back towards base.

In the background, the fighting continued.

* * *

 **Translations**

French

"Amber! Qu'est-ce s'est passé?"

 _("Amber! What happened?")_

"Je ne sais pas! Quelque chose a explosé, et maintenant y'a un feu!"

 _("I don't know! Something exploded, and now there's a fire!")_

"Putain! On y va alors, Eddie!"

 _("Fuck! Let's move it, Eddie!")_

(*French translation was provided by my sister, so many thanks to her.)

Italian

"Rossi! È ferito, male!"

 _("Rossi! He's hurt, bad!")_

(*Translation done via Google, so it might be wrong, which is deliberate.)

Spanish

Culero = either means "coward" or "asshole" depending on which Hispanic country you're from

Ándale = let's move

"¡Hijo de puta, nunca piensas!"

 _("Son of a bitch, you never think!)_

(Translation provided by, well, me, but my Spanish isn't the best, so, could be wrong.)

* * *

1\. **MOAB:** this is probably not the most practical or even appropriate usage of this bomb, but heck, MOABs are cool in _Call of Duty,_ so why not? This particular bomb is not from canon, btw, but of my own creation.

Now, as far as I'm aware, the lifting capability and bomb bay dimensions of a Shortsword bomber have never been given, so who knows if a Shortsword is even capable of carrying one (IRL, MOABs are delivered via C-130 cargo plane due to their size,) but since Shortswords exist, I'm trying to use them as much as possible so perhaps in the future, they've built smaller bombs that had just as much yield.

Oh, and in case anyone is wonder, the "GBU" of the name is derived from the way the USAF names their bombs, and it simply stands for " **g** uided **b** omb **u** nit."

 **Author's Notes**

As I mentioned back in my author's notes for chapter 38, a _Halberd_ -class destroyer like the UNSC _Gabrielle_ technically has two MACs, however for the sake of this story, I'm saying the _Gabrielle_ is an older variant of the ship and only comes equipped with one MAC.

Also, now that the Gabrielle is taking a more prominent role in the story, I suppose now is as good of a time as any to explain what I had in mind behind the origins of the name.

I'll admit, when I first started this story a year and a half ago, I had some dramatic and elaborate story planned for the history of the UNSC _Gabrielle_ , but things have changed since then and I kind of decided it's not that big of a deal anymore. So, here's the short version: the UNSC _Gabrielle_ is supposed to be named after an OC, a UNSC Navy sailor named "Gina Gabrielle" who would have been awarded the UNSC Legion of Honor in August of 2495 (so, long before the events of this story.)

I doubt anyone remembers because of how long it's been, but at the start of the story, I had complained about what I perceived to be a general lack of creativity when it came to UNSC ship names, and that I felt Bungie and 343i could have added just a bit more to the Halo universe if they had named their ships similar to the way some navies (like the US and French) named their ships. Basically, after prominent battles and war heroes. After all, the UNSC has been around for nearly 400 years by the time the games are set – surely they had all sorts of campaigns, battles, politicians, commanders, and heroes they could have named their ships and installations after?

Now, I'm not saying I don't believe this anymore, it's just, nowadays I'm less concerned about that sort of thing.

At any case, here's a small "Legion of Honor" citation I had written way back-when for this backstory:

" _For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of her life above and beyond the call of duty._

 _While taking shore leave on the surface of the colony of Biko on 6 of August 2495 (standard military calendar), then-Intelligence Specialist Third Class Gabrielle happened to notice a man acting suspiciously on the crowded boardwalk of the port town of Mandelam. After several minutes of observation, Petty Officer Gabrielle was able to determine the man was wearing a suicide vest whereupon, without hesitation or concern for her own life, Petty Officer Gabrielle tackled the insurgent into the ocean. In the ocean, Petty Officer Gabrielle was able to subdue the insurgent, holding him underwater long enough until he drowned._

 _Following that, Petty Officer Gabrielle attempted to return to the shore in order to aid with the evacuation of the beach, however before she was able to arrive, the insurgent's vest was unexpectedly detonated remotely, and Petty Officer Gabrielle was instantly killed in the blast. However, her actions had delayed the explosion long enough for the vast majority of beachgoers to evacuate the area, greatly reducing the amount of fatalities that would have otherwise been taken._

 _Petty Officer Gabrielle's undaunted courage, fighting spirit, and unwavering devotion to duty in the face of certain death, are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service, and reflect great credit upon herself, and upholding the highest traditions of the United Nations Space Command Navy."_


	45. Chapter 44

This chapter I wasn't quite able to finish before the cancellation, mostly because I wasn't sure if I wanted to include Selene's section or not. My plan was to have finished it, then made up my mind, however once I decided to abandon the story, I figured it didn't matter any longer.

* * *

 **Chapter 44**

" **Northern Front" HQ, Actium  
May 7, 2545  
2207**

 **Athena**

Athena tilted her cup back to catch the last few drops remaining of her tea, before tossing the now empty cup into the nearest trash receptacle. That was her… fifth cup today? She couldn't even remember at the moment.

As she waited for the caffeine to kick in, she glared at the screens that floated in front if her. Combat operations had been ongoing nearly nonstop for almost sixteen hours now, and the frontlines had barely moved since that time. Covenant resistance was strong, insanely so, and no one was entirely sure how they were managing to pull that off.

Sure, the UNSC had suffered from minor set backs, most notably when combat operations had been forced to come to a halt in order to allow the Air Force the chance to deal with the two cruisers that had somehow been allowed to slip right past the UNSC Navy, but all intel suggested the Covenant should have run out of steam nearly seven hours ago. Clearly though, their intelligence had been wrong which admittedly, was sadly common when it came to the Covenant. Even after twenty years of warfare, the alien invaders were still one giant mystery to humanity.

At any case, it was obvious her troops were rapidly becoming bogged down in the city, and until more reinforcements could arrive, there wasn't much she could do about it.

" _If we could force a penetration at any point in the line, we just might be able to cause the Covenant to collapse,"_ Lysander was saying. _"From what we can tell right now, Covies have committed_ _ **all**_ _their troops to their MLR – they have no defense in depth anywhere in the city. Of course, we need to concentrate our forces to do that. Which means, we need more troops…"_

"Which is not as easy as it sounds, General," Athena retorted. "Damn… neither the Navy nor the Air Force seem to be able to keep our shipping lanes open. It's been nearly twenty hours and I _still_ don't have a full, intact regiment on the surface. No, General, what you got is what you got."

Lysander shrugged. _"Then we might have to hold what we got until we receive more troops because I'm not sure how many more casualties we can sustain before we become combat ineffective."_

"No, out of the question," Athena immediately retorted. "First off, we don't have time. Secondly, we're in contact with the Covenant, we gotta keep pressure otherwise, the Covenant will _also_ be able to take this time and reorganize."

Lysander tossed his hands into the air, the first overt sign of his irritation. _"If we can't advance without reinforcements, but you're not giving it to us, yet you won't let us break contact to reshuffle our forces… I don't know what you expect us to do."_

"I want you to keep fighting, dammit!" Athena snapped, trying but failing to mask her own growing frustration. "Keep advancing, keep pushing, keep probing – just keep killing the Covenant. If it is as you say, the Covenant have placed their entire force on the front, then that means they have **no** reserves, and they can **not** sustain this level of resistance for much longer. We cannot relent, _now,_ not when we're **so** close to the finish line!"

Athena took a deep breath to try and calm herself down. "Dammit, if these were my Marines we wouldn't even be having this conversation!"

She hadn't meant to say that last part out loud, but it was a sign of her growing aggravation that it had even slipped out, and so she watched as Lysander's face harden.

" _Well, with all due respect, ma'am, we're_ _ **not**_ _your Marines,"_ he bluntly pointed out. _"We were a half destroyed armored and airborne division, reinforced by a handful of militia units that were never intend nor expected to ever see this level of combat. Yet, somehow, we're_ _ **still**_ _able to hold back an entire Covenant invasion force for_ _ **two full**_ _days with little to no reinforcements, including from_ _ **your**_ _Marines."_

Lysander trailed off as Athena held up a hand.

"General, I apologize: that was out of line," Athena said as soon as Lysander had fallen silent. "You're right: I shouldn't be discounting what you and your forces have managed to accomplish in the last few days. It's just… my understanding is that Admiral Spaatz is growing frustrated by how long this battle is taking, and he's ratcheting up the pressure on the grounds forces. And, as you know, when the big boss is upset…"

" _Shit rolls downhill,"_ Lysander agreed a bit more calmly. _"I guess we were all secretly hoping this would have been a quick and easy fight. Sad thing is: we all should have known better."_

"Yes, we should have," Athena murmured in agreement, quietly acknowledging Lysander's acceptance of her apology before letting out a sigh. "At any case, General, I'm due in another briefing with High Command in a few minutes. While I want all our forces to continue advancing, I'm going to request that we modify the operation, and have the bulk of the pressure come from the south, and not the north."

" _That's probably for the best, ma'am,"_ Lysander agreed. _"A number of armored units should have arrived by now – with their heavy weapons and heavy armor, they should be able to intensify the pressure applied to the Covenant Army_ _ **considerably**_ _."_

Athena nodded. "That'll be all, General.

Lysander inclined his head. _"Yes, ma'am. Oh, and: thank you."_

With that, he severed the connection, leaving Athena alone with her thoughts. As soon as he was gone though, it took Athena just about everything she had to prevent herself from punching her workstation.

It rankled her, to have to pull back from an operation like this, to admit her forces weren't necessarily up to the task that was presented to them. Athena was not one to give ground like that – you couldn't really, not against the Covenant – but she had to face the reality. And the reality was, the forces she had inherited had already been depleted _before_ the battle had even begun, and sixteen hours of combat had only depleted them even further, to the point of breaking. And until she could bring fresh troops down and relief the forces on the line, the main thrust of the offensive was going to have to come from somewhere else.

"'You fight with the army you have,'" she grumble to herself as she place her headset on and began to key up the line that would connect her to High Command, "'and not the one you wish you had.' Wonder what asshole said that."

Without another word, Athena waited as her line connected, and once again she found herself somewhere else. She had barely enough time to notice she was one of the last to arrive, before she was immediately confronted by General Iqbal, and the smug and absolutely infuriating smirk on his face.

"Well," he announced to the room at large, though his eyes were staring pointedly at Athena. "The ground offensive does not appear to be going well. So many casualties. If only someone had proposed an alternative strategy that did not require the use of _any_ infantry whatsoever…"

Athena felt her blood boiling at the mocking tone in Iqbal's voice, and she angrily leaned forward to retort, but before she could say a word, her superior, General Fields, abruptly allowed his hand to fall forward, hitting his desk with a loud _thump._

"Under these circumstances, there is absolutely no reason to believe the Air Forces would have proven themselves any more effective than the ground forces have," he bluntly stated.

Iqbal lazily shrugged. "Guess we never know, will we, General?"

"Oh, but we do know, General," Athena immediately snapped. "It was my understanding that the opening bombing barrage of this operation was intended to 'break the Covenant's back.' Yet, here they remain, unbroken."

To Athena's mild disappointment, Iqbal didn't rise to the bait.

"The failure of the initial barrage is hardly the fault of the Air Force as we were not given the appropriate amount of time to 'work the Covenant over,' so to speak," Iqbal retorted. "Furthermore, the targeting data we received on the Covenant's positions proved to be… less than a hundred percent accurate. And I do believe there's no question as to who's fault that is…"

He trailed off and threw a significant glance in the direction of a single UNSC Army lieutenant colonel, whom Athena vaguely recognized as Lieutenant Colonel Harper, head of the Army's INSCOM, Actium branch.

Despite being addressed in such a manner by such a high ranking officer, to Harper's credit, he hardly seemed ruffled. Instead, he raised a single eyebrow and merely replied, "Pardon me, sir, but a minor correction: targeting data for the Air Force bombers was provided by Air Force Intelligence Command, not INSCOM."

Athena could see the head of the Air Force intelligence branch, Colonel Kendrick, shuffling a bit uncomfortably in his seat.

"It was… more of a joint effect," he began to weakly protest.

"At any case," Iqbal loudly said, interrupting Kendrick. "Such an event should have merely been a minor setback for any _competent_ commander."

"'Setback?'" Athena instantly snorted. "General, is that how you would describe the failure of a certain military branch to maintain air supremacy?"

To Athena's immense satisfaction, _that_ seemed to trigger Iqbal.

"It was the Fleet's job to hold back the Covenant warships," he snapped, dropping all sense of subtlety. However, in doing so, he immediately caught the attention of every single naval officer in the room, including the commander of the Navy's fleet, Admiral Amarchih.

"Yes, 'twas the responsibility of the Fleet, to contain the enemy warships from disrupting ground operations," he shot back. "However, it 'twas always understood - given the superiority of Covenant warships – such a task would be impossible for one branch alone. Thus, it fell upon the Air Force to, as you say, 'pick the slack.'"

"The idiom is 'pick **up** the slack,' Azouz," Iqbal snapped. "Furthermore – "

"Thank you, General, that will do."

Athena immediately snapped to her feet as Admiral Spaatz came walking into the room, followed by General Langley, whom she hadn't even noticed hadn't been present.

"Be seat!" he snapped, and judging by his tone and the expression on his face, Athena could tell he had managed to catch the tail end of their argument, and wasn't happy. "Ladies and gentlemen, let's make one thing clear here: this is my system. I'm in charge here. What that means is, ultimately, I'm responsible for every success and failure that occurs to our forces in this system. And I will be the first to admit, yes, mistakes have been made and this operation is nowhere as successful as we all hoped. It happens. That's life."

"However the finger pointing and the blame game that was just occurring prior to my arrival here… unacceptable. Completely unacceptable," he snapped. "Every single person in this room is a commander, a leader. Men and women look up to all of us for guidance and leadership. What we are _not_ , are a bunch of prepubescent children on a Waypoint forum arguing about which _branch of the military is better!"_

Spaatz glanced around the room, pausing to stare at each individual, though Athena couldn't but noticed he seemed to stare at Iqbal the longest.

"We have a situation on hand, right now." He jabbed his desk for emphasis. "We're here to discuss what's going wrong, and how we can fix it. So, General Miles. Give me a no-shit assessment: what is going on in the north?"

Athena suppressed a sigh.

"We're getting bogged down," she admitted. "From what can glean, the Covenant have committed all their forces to the frontline. They don't have any reserves, nor any sort of defense in depth. In practical terms, what that means is, if we were able to concentrate our forces on a narrow point, and attempt to break through the Covenant positions, we would probably be successful."

"But doing so in a city as dense as Byzas is, doing so could result in your forces easily getting outflanked," Fields immediately pointed out. "Furthermore, the strategic goal of this operation was to remove the Covenant presence from the city, not breakthrough."

"Yes, sir, I understand that," Athena drily replied. "Which is why we haven't tried to do something like that earlier. However, to continue advancing on a 'broad front,' so to speak, we need far more forces than we have currently. Unfortunately, Northern Forces were already depleted prior to the invasion. Furthermore, the Covenant Navy's ability to disrupt our supply channels are proving to be… detrimental to our ability to provide reinforcements."

"Bottom line, General," Spaatz asked.

"We don't have the ability to push out the Covenant from the city any longer," Athena flat out acknowledged. "As a result, I'm requesting that the North and Southern fronts switch roles: instead of attacking, the North defends, while the South attacks."

All eyes immediately turned towards General Valerian, commander of all southern forces, who seemed to shrink ever so slightly at the attention.

"Well, General?" Spaatz asked, glancing at both Fields and Valerian. "Can the southern forces go on the offensive?"

Fields and Valerian glanced at each other.

"Yes," Fields said at the exact same time Valerian said, "Not exactly, sir."

There was an awkward pause as the two Army officers glanced at each other, and Athena resisted the urge to massage her temples.

"General?" Fields prompted. "How can you not be ready? I thought you had nearly three divisions of soldiers are your command?"

"Yes and no, sir," Valerian replied. "I have both the 7th Cavalry and the 80th Rifle Divisions at the ready. Furthermore, the vanguard of the 45th Rifle Division from out west is arriving and by this time tomorrow, the rest of the division will be able to be placed on the line as well. The problem is, sir, all three of these divisions are essentially light infantry divisions. And, while I understand as a former engineer, you have a 'can do' attitude, sir, fact of the matter is, none of these units are capable of assaulting fortified Covenant positions head on."

"If I had armored or infantry divisions, this might be a different story," Valerian continued. "However, the one armored unit I have, the 53rd Armored Brigade, has been attrited so badly by all the fighting in the last two days, I'm about ready to break them up into separate tank battalions, to be partitioned out to my existing divisions for support."

As Valerian spoke, Athena did her best to hide her groan. This right here, she felt, was the biggest difference between the Marine Corps and the Army.

Unlike the Army, the Marine Corps could almost be considered generalist: every single type of Marine unit was uniformed across the board. That meant, say, the 12th Marine Division was configured in the exact same way as the 21st Marine Division and because of that, theoretically the divisions were interchangeable and could do the exact same mission under the exact same circumstances with the same degree of success.

Not only that, because of their integration of combined arms at levels as low as the battalion-level – with Marine infantry, armor, artillery, and aviation assets all working together in harmony, Marine units could be used anywhere at anytime, no matter the situation, which was extremely useful in an emergency such as this.

The same, however, could not be said about the Army. Unlike the Marines, the Army was more specialized, consisting of all manner of divisions: airborne divisions for expeditionary warfare, armored divisions for spearhead and penetration operations, rifle and cavalry divisions for counterinsurgency operations, and so on and so on. Admittedly, this system meant that Army divisions would be able to accomplish their missions with far greater success than their Marine counterparts when used in their appropriate roles, however it also meant if the wrong division was in the wrong place conducting the wrong role, they were screwed.

"What would you need then, in order to go on the offensive?" Spaatz was asking as Athena fumed.

"Armored units, sir. A couple brigade combat teams, at least."

This time, Spaatz glanced at both Fields and Langley. "Generals?"

Langley let out a sigh and spoke first. "We have the 31st Armored sitting in orbit right now, just waiting to be deployed. A single brigade _could_ probably be sent down, however it would probably take every single Air Force transport we have available at the moment to not only bring their equipment and ammo, but their vehicles too. Transports that the Marines are also using."

Athena could feel Spaatz's eyes on her and she suppressed another sigh. "Marines have their aviation assets, sir. We'll make do."

"As we always do," Athena muttered under her breath.

"As for other units," Langley continued, scratching his chin in thought. "We'll have to pull from other Commands, probably CENTCOM. If I remember correctly, their 3/15th AD was preparing to deploy off world before the attack, so their personnel should all be gathered in a central location. Should be able to fly them here overnight on some civilian airplanes, and have them here in a couple of hours. Their tanks, however, will take longer to get here."

"We got warehouses of armored vehicles they could pull from, sir," Fields volunteered. "Technically, they belong to the 23rd Armored Division as part of their POMCUS stocks, but given that they're stationed on Callisto in the Sol System, I'm sure they won't mind if we use it."

"Furthermore, sir," he added, "I've got a stockpile of deadlines tanks pulled from places like Draco III and Miridem. They're no good to us just sitting there, so we'll use 'em, if we have to."

"'Circled X' fucking tanks," Athena heard Valerian mutter, and she snorted in amusement, but gave no other signs of acknowledgment.

"Good," Spaatz was saying. "Good. Then the only issue that remains is ensuring our flight corridor remains open so that these reinforcements can actually make it to the surface intact."

Spaatz didn't say any names, but Athena noticed he was staring at Iqbal rather intensely, causing Iqbal to sigh.

"I can have a couple of my carriers move into position to ensure the corridors remain mostly unhampered," he volunteered with obvious reluctance. "However, they'll only be good against fighters and gunships. Anything bigger, might become an issue."

"I have destroyers were damaged in initial combat," Amarchih said. "You can use."

"Do it," Spaatz commanded. "No point in wasting ships. Alright, ladies and gentlemen, I'm liking what I'm hearing. Let's take a couple of minutes to hash out the finer details, but aside from that, let's get to it."

The room as a whole nodded, and as the various commanders began planning, Athena couldn't help but shake her head at the rollercoaster this entire meeting had been, from start to finish.

She could only hope the Covenant's chain of command was worse than this.

 **XXXXX**

 **High Orbit, MS 222-53 a  
9th Age of Reclamation  
8th Cycle of the Planet's Rotation**

 **Fleetmaster Iam 'Oteree**

Fleetmaster Iam 'Oteree glared at his display, as if it had done some grievous offense to his clan. And in some ways, it had. For Iam had plans. Plans that would have saw the humans bled dry for their reprehensible actions towards the very Gods themselves!

Yet, what Iam saw on his display did not look even in approximation to what he expected. And this was all due to one Sangheili.

"I told you: undertake no offensive actions," he growled. "You validated my order. Yet, the moment I turn away, you proceed to do just... _that._ " Iam turned around. "Explain."

Much to Iam's growing irritation, 'Quetshadee did not looked cowed by his tone. Far from it, in fact.

"I saw an opportunity," 'Quetshadee replied, sounding respectful yet, defiant, at the same time. "To do great harm to the humans. So I took it." He suddenly gave Iam a questioning look. "Is that not what Kel 'Darsam would have done? Or Pelahsar the Strident would have done?"

Iam felt his blood slowly beginning to boil at that.

"How… dare you…," he growled. "Compare yourself to the champions of the past!? What… arrogance! You, 'Quetshadee, may be one of my greatest commanders, but you. Are. Still. _Mine!"_

"Of course," 'Quetshadee replied with a small bow. "My apologies, Fleetmaster. Perhaps I should recast my words: is this not _you_ would have done? Is this not what you _did,_ with the Fleet?"

Iam violently whirled around to angrily stare at 'Quetshadee, but again, 'Quetshadee hardly looked cowed and Iam realized he need to change his methods if he were to attempt to make 'Quetshadee comprehend. So, calling upon an old tactic of his, Iam did something completely unexpected: he relaxed, and then smiled.

"Evocatus, do you take me for a fool?" he kindly asked.

As Iam hoped, 'Quetshadee suddenly became very wary at the unexpected shift in tone, and it took him a few extra heartbeats to reply.

"N…no Shipmaster. I would never pre- "

"Then why attempt to deceive me?" Iam interrupted in the same tone but internally, he could feel his muscle begin to tense, as if he were about to wade into battle once more.

"Fleetmaster, I – " 'Quetshadee began. And that was when 'Oteree struck.

"DO NOT ATTEMPT TO MISLEAD ME, EVOCATUS!" Iam suddenly screamed and for the time since this conversation began, he saw genuine fear on 'Quetshadee's face. "YOU ATTACKED BECAUSE YOU WERE ATTEMPTING TO DEFEAT THE HUMANS BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF THE JIRALHANAE! IN DIRECT VIOLATION OF THE HIERARCHS COMMANDMENTS!"

"That is not so!" 'Quetshadee protested though there was no mistake the quiver in his voice now. "Fleetmaster, I was merely attempting to strengthen our position so that we might not appear weak but strong in the eyes of the Jiralhanae when they arrive! We cannot afford to look weak in the eyes of the lesser races!"

Iam was flabbergasted by the reply.

"What farce is this? Perhaps I was mistaken, Evocatus: it is not I, you think of a fool, but yourself. For what amount I care for the opinions of those whom reside beneath us?"

Iam started to laugh at the thought, but 'Quetshadee's next words cut him short.

"Fleetmaster. Sire. I know you care little for what you once deemed the 'political buffoonery,' but surely you must realize that the Sangheili's role as the military leaders of the Covenant are no longer once as certain as it was?" 'Quetshadee said.

Iam stared at him.

"Explain," was all he said. It was not a suggestion.

"Cycles of the Sangheili's inability to readily conquer Humanity as we once did with the Unggoy or the Mgalekgolo have left the faith many once had in us shaken," 'Quetshadee hurriedly explained. "In these troubled times, many are beginning to turn to another for guidance: the Jiralhanae."

"It is, as you say, 'the opinions of the lesser races matter little,'" Quetshadee hastily added. "But, however little, they do matter. And because of recent unfortunate and unavoidable events, it would appear the faith of the San'Shyuum has also weakened. To ensure that we remain in their favor, we Sangheili must assure _all_ members of the Covenant that we are still strong, that we are still capable of great victories. But to accomplish that, we must take action. We must take risk. Which is why I dared defy your orders so that I may be able to seize opportunities to prove our strength."

'Quetshadee fell silent and stared anxiously at Iam while he waited for a reply. For his part, Iam was considering everything he had just heard, and decided there was a certain truth to 'Quetshadee's words. While it was true Iam cared little for the political arena, he would have been a fool to ignore it completely. He _had_ heard rumblings of talk similar to what 'Quetshadee had just said, however 'Quetshadee painted a far grimmer picture than Iam had understood.

Unfortunately, 'Quetshadee's explanation did little to assuage Iam's anger over his current, tactical situation…

"So. You wished to convoy strength," Iam quietly asked and 'Quetshadee quickly agreed. "Then tell me, my dear 'Quetshadee: where is our strength."

'Quetshadee looked puzzled. "Sire?"

Iam felt something inside of him abruptly snap and he whirled around, grabbed his display, ripped it from the station and hurtled it at 'Quetshadee, who just barely managed to catch it.

"WHERE. IS. OUR. STRENGTH!?" Iam roared and startled 'Quetshadee stared at the display.

Iam knew what 'Quetshadee was looking at when his facial expressions changed to that of horror. The display was currently depicting the disposition and current location of all Covenant forces on the surface, as well as on orbit. Under ideal circumstances, the entire human city would be blanketed in friendly markers. However, at the moment, it was not.

"All Covenant forces are currently engaged against the human forces," Iam growled. "When I commanded all forces cease offensive activity, I had but a paltry thousand to act as reserves. I had intended to preserve them for when the humans committed their attack. However, then _you_ , took your forces in the south, and attacked the humans _without_ my permission, sustaining heavy losses in the processes. As a consequence, I was forced to commit my reserves to the south in order to maintain the integrity of our position!"

"Make no mistake, Evocatus," Iam snarled. "I do not mourn those martyrs who have given their lives for the Hierarchy. I mourn that, without those reserves, I cannot hope to restrain the humans any longer once they commit to their attack. And that, if I wish to hold this landing zone, as per the Hierarchs' commandment, I will now need to beg _**-beg –**_ them for reinforcements. So, again I ask: WHERE IS OUR STRENGTH!?"

"I… I did not know, Shipmaster," 'Quetshadee desperately said, causing Iam to snort.

"No. You did not. Because you are a fool," he sneered. "A fool I would personally execute, if I had more forces. But I do not, so you shall live to prove your worth once more. But not here. Get out. GET OUT!"

'Quetshadee immediately scampered to his feet, as if he had just been electrocuted. Bowing deeply, he slowly backed out of the door, not daring to look up in the event Iam changed his mind in regards to his continued survival.

Iam turned away, not wanting to even glance in 'Quetshadee's direction, least he give into the desire and have the nincompoop executed.

It wasn't until he heard the door close and lock behind him did Iam finally release his rage.

Letting out a loud scream of anger and frustration, Iam turned to a nearby console and just began pummeling it with his fist. He kept up his assault until the console was reduced to nothing more a pile of sparks and scrap metal, and his hands were bloodied and bruised.

A thousand curses be upon that 'Quetshadee! Bad enough the first San'shyuum lost to the humans happened under his stewardship, but Iam had hoped to salvage at least some of his honor by forcing the humans to bleed themselves dry by having them pummel their forces against his own – enough that it would take naught but scant reinforcements to have the humans scattered like leaves on the wind! In that regard, Iam had hoped to prove the Hierarchy his continued worth!

But if not for that damned 'Quetshadee…

Now if Iam were to not receive reinforcements post haste, then his entire Legion would be destroyed, eliminating any and all gains the Covenant may have achieved while occupying this world, and rendering the martyrdom of the Minister moot!

No, Iam need additional forces, and he needed them _immediately._ And there was but one method to acquire those forces…

Stalking over to the door, Iam jabbed his palm against the button for the intercom.

"Connect me with High Charity!" he demanded before the Unggoy on the other end could say a word. "I wish to seek an audience with the Hierarchs!"

" _At once, Fleetmaster!"_ the Unggoy squeaked, and Iam took the moment to regain his composure as he waited.

And waited.

And waited even longer.

And then proceeded to wait even longer.

Finally, just when Iam was about to release his ire once more, this time over the incompetence of the Unggoy, an image abruptly coalesced before his very eyes. Only, it was not an image of one of the Hierarchs. In fact, the figure that stood before him was not even a San'shyuum, but of a fellow Sangheili. And, much to Iam's further shame and embarrassment, he recognized this Sangheili.

"High Councilor 'Breshkee," he whispered in awe, before abruptly remembering his situation, and immediately prostrated himself.

Many planetary cycles ago, High Councilor 'Breshkee had been Iam's fleetmaster and mentor, teaching him the ways of not solely being a just and honorable warrior, but that of a shipmaster. It was under his stewardship that Iam was able to first obtain command of one of the Hierarchs most holy ships, and it was also under his stewardship that Iam participated in his first Crusade against the heretical humans.

However, as with many of their kind, 'Breshkee had been badly injured in one of their many campaigns against the humans, resulting in his inability to personally lead his forces on the battlefield. Rather than allow himself to wither away like a crippled animal, 'Breshkee instead was able to win himself a position on the Covenant High Council, exchanging his swords for words.

In short, 'Breshkee was the quintessence of the Sangheili spirit, and the exemplar of everything Iam had hoped to achieve. Therefore, to have 'Breshkee see him when he had been brought so low…. The shame was almost unbearable for Iam.

"High Councilor 'Breshkee, you honor me with your presence," Iam said as respectfully as he could. "I did not expect you. I… I was seeking an audience with the Hierarchs."

" _The Hierarchs are aware,"_ 'Breshkee rumbled, and even though that was all he said, Iam needed not more to comprehend the message that was being delivered: the Hierarchs knew he was seeking an audience, however they refused to grant one. Iam was no longer in their favor.

Iam could not help but wince, but did his best to maintain his resolve.

"I have badly wronged the Hierarchs," he confessed. "And it is only through their merciful nature that I have been granted the chance to redeem myself. And thus, it is with a heavy heart that I find myself ask… nay, pleading, for one further boon, for – "

Iam hurriedly silenced himself as 'Breshkee abruptly lifted a single finger.

" _You are in no position to ask for further boons or mercies,"_ 'Breshkee quietly said, though there was no masking the anger in his voice. _"The Hierarchs may have granted you mercy, however the High Council is not as generous._ "

"As they should," Iam quickly agreed. "The Minister of Contentment was no doubt a highly influential and well regarded member of the Council and – "

" _No, he was a young upstart and a buffoon,"_ 'Breshkee snapped, cutting Iam off. _"It is doubtful few, if any, tears of grief will be shed in his honor. However, the_ significance _of his death will not go unremarked._ "

"I… High Councilor, I do not understand," Iam confessed, causing 'Breshkee's mandibles to curl up in a sneer.

" _No, for you are naught but a simpleton, unable to see beyond the tips of your mandibles, and were it not for this Crusade against the humans, you would have remained but a simple Evocatus,"_ he growled. _"Are you aware, Shipmaster, that there has been a small but vocal minority within the Council itself that have long questioned the continued role of the Sangheili as stewards of the military?"_

" _Yes,"_ 'Breshkee continued. _"These weak minded councilors have no doubt been influenced and intimidated by members of the wretched Jiralhanae race, cursed be their kind. Fortunately, through the efforts of myself and the other Sangheili High Councilors, such naivety has yet to spread. And it would have continued that way, if not for a young fool that allowed a member of the Council to be assassinated,_ _ **while under his protection,**_ _and thus granting proof to the belief that the Sangheili are_ _ **no longer capable!"**_

" _ **Can you even comprehend, the fiasco you have created!?"**_ 'Breshkee roared. _**"Countless arguments and debates! The reputation of an entire species! Our species! Ruined! Because of YOU!"**_

Iam ducked his head, unable to mask his shame any further. 'Quetshadee had of course spoken on this very matter only but a few moments ago, however he had been unable to convey the sheer gravity of the situation to Iam. However, to hear the same topic of discussion from someone as respected as honorable as High Councilor 'Breshkee… Iam was only just beginning to fully comprehend the repercussions of his failure. And why it was essential he succeed in his defense.

"High Councilor," Iam began when it was abundantly clear that 'Breshkee had finished speaking. "I… I understand the magnitude of my failure. And I swear to you, on my honor and that of my clan, I will do _everything_ in order to redeem the image of our kind. However, I desperately need rein- "

" _Reinforcements will arrive when the new Fleetmaster deems it necessary,"_ 'Breshkee snapped. Iam was shocked.

"And who is this new Fleetmaster?" Iam asked before he could catch himself but fortunately, 'Breshkee did not seem to take note of his tone.

" _It is a Jiralhanae War Chieftain, one they call 'Lepidus,'"_ 'Breskhee replied, his mandibles curled upwards in disgust. _"It shall be he who determines when reinforcements arrive, and only him. Until that moment arrives, you are to fight with whatever forces you have remaining. And if necessary, find redemption on the battlefield!"_

And before Iam could say another word, 'Breshkee's image abruptly dissipated, leaving Iam alone in his quarters in complete shock. In essence, he had just been ordered to die on the battlefield.

At once, Iam felt conflicted. While of course, he was thrilled at being given the chance to salvage what little honor he had left like a true warrior - on the battlefield, surrounded by the corpses of the heretics – a very small and minute part of him could not help but wonder if this was the best course of action for the Covenant Empire as a whole.

Iam immediately stalked over to the door and slammed his hand on the intercom.

"Send me 'Quetshadee!" he demanded, in and effort to distract himself from his thoughts.

As he waited, Iam did his best to shift his attention to the composition and positioning of his forces and compare them to that of the humans. Under these circumstances, it was apparent for Iam, there was but two options remaining: all he could do was attack, and pray.

Pray that this, so called _'Lepidus,'_ was not one to tarry.

 **XXXXX**

 **Covenant Battlecrusier** _ **Triumphant Declaration  
**_ **Somewhere in Covenant Space**

 **Lepidus**

Eight young Jiralhanae warriors stood in a rough semi-circle. With feet planted in a deep lunge and their arms stretched out behind them, it would have appeared as if all eight Jiralhanae were mere moments away from executing an imminent and powerful leap. However, upon closer inspection, one would begin to the notice the trembling limbs, the shuffling feet, and the matted clumps of fur that cover their bodies, and it would become evident that these Jiralhanae had been holding their poses for quite some time. Yet, not a single one of them dared faltered or voiced their complaints. Not while a _ninth_ Jiralhanae walked among them, circling them as if a predator stalking their prey, waiting for an opening to strike.

In a culture that placed physical strength ahead of all other attributes, Lepidus' position as War Chieftain of his pack and a Shipmaster of the Covenant was unusual in the sense that Lepidus was far from the most imposing figure of his kind. Even amongst the Jiralhanae in the room, Lepidus stood a full head shorter than they. And yet, as he paced through the room, not a single one of them dared raised their heads and met his gaze, quickly bowing their heads in respect every time Lepidus' red eyes swept over them.

"This is how we keep our faith!" Lepidus abruptly declared, his surprisingly deep voice echoing through the room. "How we honor Those Who Walk the Path."

"War Chieftain Maccabeus used to have us, his pack, perform this ceremony," Lepidus continued, pausing by each Jiralhanae in the room and fixing them with a hard glare to see how they would react. Most steadily attempted to ignore him in order to maintain their concentration on the task at hand, but he could see a few falter ever so slightly. "Before every meal, every jump, _every_ course of action. But we dared not complain, for it was the expected course of action for _all_ Jiralhanae, the chosen Guardians of the Great Journey."

"Or rather," he corrected, "it once _was,_ before that impetuous _nephew_ of his took charge."

That statement seemed to rile his pack because at once, one of the eight angrily turned in his direction.

"War Chieftain Tartarus is the Chieftain of the Jiralhanae!" he exclaimed. "You cannot – "

The Jiralhanae was abruptly cut off when Lepidus' fist hit him square in the right cheek. It was hardly a heavy blow, but it was still enough to send the welp staggering; Lepidus may have been short, but he was as strong, if not stronger, than most members of his kind.

"I did not give you permission to speak, pup," Lepidus quietly but coolly said, glaring at the younger Jiralhanae as he gripped his jaw in pain. "Get up. Return to formation. Or you shall quickly discover what a _real_ blow feels like."

The younger Jiralhanae didn't say a word. Instead, he hastily climbed to his feet and resumed his position, just as the doors to the room opened, and in came six Unggoy stewards, bearing a large wooden platter. On it, sat the glistening carcass of a Thorn Beast. The aroma of the perfectly roasted creature was enough to set the stomachs of all assembled growling, however Lepidus was disciplined enough to show no signs of interest as the Unggoy awkwardly placed the platter on two sawhorses in the middle of the room, before bowing and hurriedly leaving the room.

"The Jiralhanae are the Keepers of the Faith," Lepidus declared, drawing all attention back onto him. "Defenders of the Light and Guardians of Those Who Walk the Path. We must always remain vigilant and ready to defend all that is Just."

Without another word, Lepidus turned towards the opposite side of the room where a mosaic was embedded in the deck. Consisting of a circular mandala, it was surrounded by seven rings, each of which was comprised of a different mineral.

Lepidus calmly stepped into the outermost ring. Ignoring the feeling of the rough obsidian shards against his bare soles, he lifted his arms.

"Abandonment," he declared.

"The First Age!" his pack yelled back. "Ignorance and fear!"

Lepidus moved clockwise to a second ring, this one of iron.

"Conflict," he said.

"The Second Age! Rivalry and bloodshed!"

Moving forward, Lepidus stepped into the third ring, one of polished jade.

"Reconciliation," he rumbled.

"The Third! Humility and brotherhood!"

Gracefully making his way into the four circle, one of geodes, Lepidus called put, "Discovery."

"Fourth Age!" replied the pack. "Wonder and understanding!"

As he stepped into the next circle, out of the corner of eye, Lepidus noticed the _Triumphant Declaration_ 's master officer quietly stepping into the room. The Master Officer knew – as did all members of the crew – better than to interrupt the Progression of the Ages ceremony, therefore his presence here meant that something… _unusual_ had just occurred, and that piped Lepidus' curiosity. Nevertheless, as was expected of him, he would finish the ceremony before attending to other matters.

"Conversion," he said without giving a hint he had seen the Master Officer.

"Fifth! Obedience and freedom!"

Stepping into the next ring, one of opal, he said, "Doubt."

"Sixth! Faith and patience!"

Finally, Lepidus reached the finally ring, which would normally consist of bright flakes of a Forerunner alloy. However, in this far quadrant, at the very end of the Covenant's supply lines, such a mineral was impossible to obtain, and Lepidus was forced to use a hologram of the material instead. Nevertheless, he treated the image with the same reverence he would have had it been the real material as he concluded, "Reclamation."

"Seventh! Journey and salvation!" his pack thundered.

By now, saliva was practically streaming from each of their mouths yet, they dared not move a muscle as Lepidus lifted his arms once more and declared, "Praise be to the Holy Prophets. May we help keep them safe as they work to find The Path."

And then, just to test his pack even further, Lepidus held his arms there for a few moments longer than was absolutely necessary, listening as they fought against their primal desire to eat, before finally lowering his arms.

"You have done well," Lepidus complimented to no one in particular. "You may feast."

And just like a switch had been turned, the faithful, disciplined warriors that had been his pack instantly revered to their more primal ways as they descended upon the Thorn Beast and began to engorge themselves. Lepidus watched them enjoy their reward for a moment, before wordlessly gesturing for the Master Officer to approach. As the Master Officer approached though, Lepidus could see a mildly contemptuous look on his face as he stared at the pack feasting.

"What, Paullus?" Lepidus quietly asked.

"Look at them," the Master Officer, Paullus, said, gesturing at the pack. "All that time spent on devotion and faith, and this is their reward? A mere scrap of meat? And the fools will think it was worth it. Its impressive really, how this 'Great Journey' of the Covenant can make docile beasts out of warriors."

Lepidus could feel the corners of his mouth begin to curl up in a similar smirk, but he did his best to hide it. Instead, he muttered out of the corner of his mouth, "Careful who may overhear you, brother. Religion may be an excellent weapon to use to control the rabble, but it is a double-edged blade, one that can _easily_ be turned against the welder."

"Of course, brother," Paullus respectfully replied.

Lepidus silently nodded. Despite being older and physically larger than him, Paullus had always been willing to defer authority to his younger brother, something Lepidus had always found exceedingly useful: he could trust that his brother had no ambition or desire to succeed him yet at the same time, Lepidus knew Paullus had the strength and physicality to help protect him in the event some other Jiralhanae proved to be less restrained. In short, Paullus made for the perfect second in command.

"What news, Master Officer?" Lepidus demanded as he abruptly grew serious and turned away to leave the room, with Paullus in tow.

"High Charity hails, War Chieftain," Paullus reported, also growing serious. "They demanded to converse with you directly, however once I informed them of the ritual you were performing, they determined their news did not warrant an interruption. Instead, you are to hail them back the moment you completed the Progression of the Ages ceremony."

Lepidus grunted in acknowledgement. "Must be the Sangheili flapping their mandibles, as usual. Making all sorts of noises, just to assert their authority. No doubt they have new orders for us."

"Do you wish to delay contacting them, then? I could stall them even longer," Paullus volunteered causing Lepidus to snort in amusement at the thought. Nevertheless, he shook his head.

"No. Best get it over with," Lepidus replied. "We will see what these harlequins on the High Council have to say for themselves. Have the communications sent to my quarters – I shall converse with them in private."

"By your will, War Chieftain," Paullus said with a respectful bow.

Without a second glance at his brother, Lepidus turned and began making his way down the corridors of the ship in the direction of the quarters that had been reserved for his use. Inside, there wasn't much; even on a ship as large as a _CCS-_ classbattlecrusier, there wasn't much room for frivolities such as private space. Regardless, after making sure the door was locked and sealed behind him, Lepidus made his way to the center of the room where a small control panel was located. Taking a moment to straighten his armor, he reached out and jabbed at a blinking button.

At once, a hologram manifested itself before his very eyes, only instead of the Sangheili High Councilor he was expecting, the image of a San'shyuum appeared instead. Surprised as he was, it took Lepidus a moment to realize specifically, _who,_ this San'shyuum was:

The High Prophet of Mercy. One of the three members of the triumvirate that made up the Hierarchs, the ruling body of the _entire_ Covenant Empire.

"High Prophet…" Lepidus whisper, in complete awe, before abruptly remembering who he was talking to, and he immediately prostrated himself. "Hierarch, you honor me with your presence!"

" _Shipmaster Lepidus,"_ Mercy replied, his old and trembling voice sounding like gravel to Lepidus' ears. Nonetheless, he refused to allow his distaste to show as he immediately said,

"Hierarch, I must humbly beg for your forgiveness. If I had known it was _you,_ whom had hailed, I would have immediately ceased all activity in order to greet you personally."

" _Nonsense,"_ Mercy replied. _"Once your batman expounded on the ritual I was to interrupt, I insisted that communications be delayed until you were hence able to complete your task."_

Mercy leaned forward, a warm look on his otherwise wrinkled face. _"The Progression of Ages – such a sacred ceremony. Seven rings to remind us of the many ages. To help us remember Halo and its divine and guiding light."_

"May it guide us, safety, along the Great Path," Lepidus replied as reverently as he could manage, while doing his best to hide his true thoughts on the manner. "Hierarch, I humbly thank thee for your kindness and your understanding."

" _The gratitude is all mine; it warms my inner being to see such devotion among our finest warriors, as it is sadly becoming lacking, especially among the youth,"_ Mercy replied, before his face grew hard. _"Now. Onto business."_

Lepidus grunted. "Of course, Hierarch. How may your humble servant serve you?"

" _Nasty business, I am afraid. Have you heard the news?"_ Before Lepidus could reply, Mercy leaned forward, as if to tell a secret. _"Our beloved and renowned brethren, the Minister of Contentment, has fallen in battle against the heretical humans!"_

"Impossible!" Lepidus immediately roared, even as he frantically tried to remember who the Minister of Contentment even _was._ A High Councilor, no doubt, but beyond that… "A member of the High Council? Slain by the humans!? This travesty cannot be allowed to pass!"

Mercy held up a placating hand. _"Tranquility, Shipmaster. I too, share your grief. I too, share your desire for revenge. After all, this… butchering… of our dear Minister marks the first of our kind to fall before the sins of this plague on the galaxy known as humanity. Opportunity for revenge will come – in due time. For now though, there are_ other _, more pressing matters to attend to._ "

Mercy abruptly turned so he was facing Lepidus directly.

" _The assassination would have occurred not, were it not for the incompetence of the commander of the local Covenant forces. A commander by the name of Fleetmaster Iam 'Oteree."_

Lepidus automatically felt his lips curl in disgust at the very obvious Sangheili name.

" _Not only has this bungler allowed this assassination to occur right before his very eyes, he has also allowed his forces to approach the edge of collapse,"_ Mercy continued, seemingly not taking note of Lepidus' involuntary facial expressions. _"As of his latest report, he is but mere cycles away from facing total annihilation by the hands of the humans. Unless he is to receive reinforcements…"_

Mercy trailed off and gave Lepidus a significant look, and at once, Lepidus realized what he was suggesting.

"You wish to send my fleet and reinforce this… 'Oteree's position," Lepidus finished, nodding his head in understanding. Missions such as that were generally par for the course. "If that is your will, Hierarch, it shall be done. I shall inform my commanders to set course immediately. We shall bath the stars with the blood of the humans in the name of the Hierarchs, and in honor of the Minister of Contentment!"

Lepidus bowed, expecting Mercy to terminate the connection. Instead though, he gestured for Lepidus to rise and puzzled, Lepidus did as he was commanded.

" _It brings me great joy to see such enthusiasm among our warriors,"_ Mercy began. _"However, you misunderstand me: you are not just to reinforcement 'Oteree's position, you are to replace him. As Fleetmaster."_

In that moment, Lepidus swore he felt his heart stop beating as he attempted to comprehend exactly what Mercy had just said. Him, a Jiralhanae, replacing a Sangheili commander in the field? That was… that was unheard of.

"Me?" he heard himself squeak, and he mentally cursed at this overt sign of weakness and he quickly forced himself to concentrate once more. "If it is your will that I am to replace this 'Oteree, then it shall be so. I shall seize control of what remains of our forces, and I shall turn defeat into victory. This, I promise you, Hierarch!"

Then he hesitated.

"As humbled as I am by your confidence in me, Hierarch," he slowly began, "but I must ask: why me?"

Mercy seemed to smile before turning away, silent for a moment, and just when Lepidus thought he wasn't about to respond, he suddenly spoke up once more.

" _These are troubling times,"_ he began, and Lepidus could tell he wasn't just talking about current affairs, but in general. _"This Crusade against the humans has tested the faith of many, as you can attest, Shipmaster, having hunted down and destroyed many of those who had strayed from the path and would wish to see the Covenant weakened. More adverse terrain lies ahead of us, Commander, and we the Hierarchs have a need to discover who will choose to stand besides us on our journey, and who will falter and fail."_

" _As for why you, specifically, Commander?"_ Mercy turned to look at Lepidus. _"Your work at maintain security within our borders has been exemplary – it is why we rewarded you command of this ship, after all. In addition, it is the belief of the Hierarchs that you possess a keen, tactical mind. And, of course, your own war chieftain, Tartarus, suggested you would be ideal for this role."_

"Did he now?" Lepidus quietly muttered, before, more loudly, he said, "I am humbled by the faith so many have within me, and I shall endeavor to ensure it will not be in vain."

" _And that is why you were selected,_ Fleetmaster,"Mercy said. _"Now, We understand it will take some cycles before you are able to gather your forces and deploy. Therefore, the Hierarchs have taken the liberty of assembling another fleet for you: the Fleet of Furious Redemption. Said fleet is ready and only awaiting your word; should you give it, the fleet will arrive on the battlefield within but a few planetary cycles. However, if you wish to wait to gather your ships so that you may be able to attack as one…"_

Mercy unexpectedly trailed off as he gave Lepidus a significant look, as if hinting something, and it wasn't hard to determine what that was. Despite their penchants for violence, Jiralhanae were far from fools. And, despite what the Sangheili may choose to believe otherwise, most Jiralhanae chieftains were more than capable of dabbling in politics.

With that in mind, Lepidus calmly considered everything Mercy was telling him, as well as everything he _wasn't_ telling him. By outward appearances, it would almost seem as if Mercy was _encouraging_ Lepidus to allow this 'Oteree to die on the battlefield by delaying his reinforcements. Obviously, as a Jiralhanae, Lepidus had no qualms over the death of any Sangheili and in fact, would relish it.

However, Lepidus took great pride in not being anyone's fool, so rather than allow his emotional instincts rule his judgement, Lepidus took his time to ponder on the issue even further. Two questions immediately presented themselves to him: what benefit would Mercy gain if Lepidus allowed this 'Oteree to simply be overrun and, more importantly to Lepidus, did it make sense militarily?

The latter question was easy to answer: no, it was not. Even without complete knowledge of the current situation, the loss of local Covenant forces at the hands of the humans would greatly set back his efforts to achieve victory, and he could not allow it, no matter how much humiliation it would cause the Sangheili.

As to the former question, however, that would be one that Lepidus would need to consider very carefully, in a more secure setting, before he could even begin to postulate the answer. For now though…

"Hierarch, I humbly request you deploy the fleet, post haste," Lepidus finally said and he glanced up in time to catch a hint of surprise on Mercy's face and he added, "A victory for the Covenant, is a victory for all, is it not, Hierarch?"

Mercy safely nodded, but aside from that brief moment of astonishment, he showed no other signs of emotions.

" _Well said, Fleetmaster,"_ he said, gravely. _"Your actions prove you were the wisest of choices. Very well, we shall immediately deploy the fleet. In the meanwhile, ready your troops, Commander, for you have been called."_

And with that, Mercy's image disappeared, leaving Lepidus to stand there, in complete shock. So much had just happened; so many things to process, he didn't even know where to begin.

His console abruptly let out a soft chime, startling Lepidus into action. He walked over to it and hit a button. At once, all sorts of information began displaying before his very eyes, and it took him a few moments to realize it was all the intelligence the Covenant Empire had regarding the planet under attack.

At once, realization struck Lepidus: this was happening.

He couldn't prevent the wicked grin from appearing on his face as he jabbed another button.

" _War Chieftain?"_ Paullus immediately said.

As excited as Lepidus was, it took him a few tries before he could get any words out.

"Assemble the all the commanders," he finally managed to gasp out. "High Charity has given us new commands."

To his credit, Paullus didn't bothering wasting time asking questions.

" _It shall be done,"_ was all he said before the line went dead.

Lepidus just grinned before turning his attention to the information he had received. Before briefing his commanders as to what events had just transpired here moments ago, he himself first needed to understand the situation.

There wasn't much to process. The Covenant had identified the planet, designed as MS 222-53 a, many system cycles ago very early in the Crusade against the humans as a potential planet for conquest due to the high concentrations of iron ore within the planet's crust. However, it wasn't until recently that the Empire was in a position where the planet was needed. As was standard, a small fleet, accompanied by a member of the High Council, was detached to both assume control of the planet, as well as bless it before permanent residence could be established.

However, upon arrival, Covenant forces were surprised to find the planet was already under human control, and battle was quickly joined, leading to the events that would result in the brutal assassination of the Minister of Contentment.

Now, due to the incompetence of the local commander, this "Iam 'Oteree," all Covenant forces stood on the edge of the precipice of destruction. If Lepidus hoped to achieve victory, he would need to plan carefully, though no doubt it would be a challenging fight.

Lepidus felt a bloodthirsty smile crawl onto his face as he stared at an image of the planet in question, this MS 222-53 a. Or, "Actium," as the humans apparently called it. Regardless of the challenges that laid ahead of them, this planet would no doubt fall into the hands of the Covenant. The Hierarchs demanded it.

And Lepidus did not intend to fail them.

XXXXX

Ingalls Financial, Byzas

May 7, 2545

2346

Selene

Selene woke with a start. As odd as it may have sounded, for a moment there, she felt uncomfortable, like the eyes of the devil were staring right into her soul. However, as she turned over and looked around the room, the only person within eyesight was Shin. And he appeared to still be asleep.

Strange.

Turning back over, Selene laid there for a few minutes, waiting to see if the sensation returned, but it never did, and she eventually decided to chalk it up as her imagination. Nevertheless, she couldn't help but feel uneasy about it, so she hurriedly casted around the room for something else to concentrate on.

Glancing up towards the ceiling, Selene took note that the low rumbling of fighting continued to echo around the room. At this point, Selene wasn't even surprised: after the first hour of fighting, Selene had stopped panicking once she realized how safe they were inside this vault. After six hours had passed, Selene had come to the conclusion this battle was going to end up being an all day event. Now, after nearly seventeen and half hours of non-stop explosions, the noise itself had disappeared into the background.

Letting out a mute sigh, Selene laid back down on her makeshift pillow and considered what to do next. Despite having occupied the same room with the same people for over seventeen hours, there hadn't been much talking. After slamming the doors shut behind them, everyone had been too exhausted – physically, mentally, and emotionally – to really be able to hold a coherent conversation. Each individual "group" had then proceeded to occupy their own corners of the room, where they stayed there until they were all convinced the danger had mostly passed, at which point boredom had taken over and everyone had drifted asleep.

But now, after this many hours and with the fighting showing no signs of relenting or slowing down, Selene felt it was time for her to formulate some actual plans as to what she and the other survivors were going to do to live through the near future. And the first thing she had to do was take stock.

Kingsley was dead. As was Dawlish. And, from what Dawlish had said before he had kicked it, most of his team had been killed as well in the fighting. There hadn't been too many people in the department before all the invasion had begun but now… was it possible that Selene was the last member of her precinct still alive?

Of course, even if any of her fellow police officers were still around, it's not like they were in any position to help her now. No, she would have to rely on the people in this very room beside her, which unfortunately wasn't a whole lot either. In fact, with Kingsley, Dawlish, and Dawlish's stepson, Matthews, all dead, who did that leave? Herself, a mother and her two kids –

\- and Shin.

Selene frowned to herself as she thought about Shin. At this point, she still wasn't sure what to make of him. On one hand, he appeared to be the only around who seemed to know what the hell he was doing. On the other… well, there was no denying: he made Selene uncomfortable. Just his casually ruthless nature and the way he seemed to stare at her like he was looking right through her… if Selene had a choice, she honestly would have ditched him a long time ago.

But again, he was the only one with experience that Selene had encountered so far. Maybe if Dawlish had survived, he could have helped her keep an eye on him but that was obviously impossible now and… and…

Well, Selene just didn't have a choice. Simply put, she wasn't ready to die yet. Which meant she either needed to figure out a way to trust Shin, or learn how to survive on her own.

Selene's stomach suddenly let out a low growl, and it suddenly occurred to her it had nearly been a full day since she had her last meal. She wondered if they had any of that bread still left.

Forcing herself to sit upright, Selene staggered to her feet, then walked over to Shin as quietly as she could. Shin had taken up residence in the corner just to the left of the door, and was sprawled out across the ground, fast asleep. Fortunately, it would appear he had gotten hot at some point as he had unzipped his jacket, and Selene could just see the tip of the bread sticking out from under the folds, so she reached out and –

"What do you want."

Selene jumped and she glanced at Shin's face to see him staring at her without a hint that he'd been fast asleep only a moment ago.

"Sorry," Selene whispered. "Didn't mean to wake you."

"You didn't," Shin bluntly replied as he sat upright. "Were you looking for something?"

"The food, actually," Selene said, jerking her head in the direction of the loaf. Shin glanced at it, then shrugged.

"You hungry or something?" he asked as he handed it over.

"Starving, actually. But not so much I would object to sharing," Selene replied as she tore a chunk of bread off and stuffed it into her mouth, before offering the loaf back to Shin, who shook his head.

"Nah, I'm good," he said. "I had an emergency stash of energy bars in one of my pockets; been munching on them all day so I'm about full right now."

Selene nodded and placed the loaf back into her lap.

"Though," Shin added, "might want to save some for the kids over there. Don't know if they've got anything."

Selene guiltily jerked her head in the direction of the sleeping family occupying the corner just opposite of them. She had kind of forgotten about them already.

"Good call," she said as she swallowed. "Yeah, I'll be sure to save some."

Shin nodded, and fell silent. Selene continued to munch on her potion of the food, though this time taking pains to actually chew it, to make sure it lasted for long as possible. As she did, she eventually realized Shin was staring at her with an odd expression on his face, and the realization made her suddenly feel very comfortable.

"Shin." Shin gave a start. "You alright?"

Shin nodded.

"Just thinking," he said. "'Bout what we gotta do next."

"Yeah? Like what?" Selene asked before taking another bite.

"We need to find another shelter."

That took Selene by surprise, but fortunately she was able to avoid doing a cliché spit take.

"What? How come?" she asked as soon as she had swallowed. "What's wrong with this place!? We've been here for seventeen hours and no bombs or bullets have punched through. Not even a hint. I don't think we're ever going to be able to find a place like this again."

"Yeah, but do you see any food? Any water?" Shin pointed out. "Even if bombs don't break through, we'll die of dehydration long before we get killed by anything else. Plus, I've been looking around: this vault is vacuum sealed."

"What?"

"Yeah," Shin continued. "Front door is the only way in or out of here. Rest of the room is airtight. Only reason we haven't suffocated yet is because there's some sort of fan/ventilation system pumping fresh air here, but that's gotta be powered by something, but I don't know where that is. And because of that, I don't know how much power we have. Realistically, we could run out of air any minute now."

Selene involuntarily shivered. She had noted the lack of food and water, of course, but somehow she had missed the airtight seal on the vault door coming in. Food and water they could have dealt with by going out to the surface and scavenging but the lack of oxygen? Plus, now that she thought about it, how could they make sure the vault door didn't somehow get locked with them inside? She didn't even want to think about that happening.

Yet, at the same time…

"If we go outside, we're going to be exposed. To everything. Bombs, bullets, artillery." An image of Matthew's scalped head briefly flashed through her mind and she shivered once more. "I mean, the fighting has been going on for nearly eighteen hours now, and it doesn't seem to show any signs of relenting. Do we really want to risk our lives like that?"

"As long as we leave within the next hour or so, we should be fine," Shin dismissively said. "Fighting will have mostly died down by then."

Selene stared at him. "And how do you know that?"

"Because," Shin casually began, "maybe ODSTs can fight for that long without stopping, but I guarantee you our equipment can't. Not nonstop for eighteen, nineteen hours. Even tanks have got to stop eventually, if only to refuel and rearm. We should be able to catch a reprieve here in an hour or so. And that's when we'll make our move."

Somehow, that didn't sound right to Selene, but the problem was, she didn't know enough about military equipment to say for certain whether Shin was right or not. So all she did was nod her head and say, "As long as we're headed in the right direction, then I guess we'll be okay."

Shin cocked his head. "What do you mean?"

Selene sighed, before reaching into her back pocket and pulled out a small document.

"I found a random map of the area when I was looking around the room," she explained as she laid out the amp on the ground in front of them. "Thought I would try and retrace our steps and see if we can't get our bearings straight. We were supposed to be heading north, right?"

"Right," Shin greeted. "See if we could get ahead of the Covenant advance and join in with the UNSC retreat. What of it?"

"Well," Selene reluctantly replied. "We've been headed in the wrong direction."

"Say what?"

Selene pointed at a spot on the map. "This is where we are right now, right? Ingalls Financial? And then, this is where we came from, Ellison Bridge. Before that, it's a little hazy, but it was from the ruins of the subway, yeah? So, if we look for the nearest subway station or entrance to Ellison Bridge, that would put us about… here." Selene glanced up. "Now, if we draw a line between these points… notice anything?"

Selene could see Shin glancing at the map and repeating everything she had just said as he traced their journey backwards. Then he sighed.

"We've been going south. Further into the city, right?"

Selene quietly nodded.

"How the fuck we do that?"

"I was wondering about that too," Selene admitted. "That is a bit harder to pin down, as there was a large chunk of the day where I was just completely out of it. So, I started at the beginning. This is the intersection we set up that roadblock. The point where the day started." She pointed at a spot on the map. "Now, after we got, um…"

"Our asses kicked?" Shin suggested.

"Well… I was looking for something a bit politer, but sure, we'll go with that," Selene allowed. "After we got our butts kicked,


	46. Outline

**Outline**

This is the general outline that I created for myself at the beginning of the story, where I laid the framework for pretty much how I imagined the story to go. Do note that because this was originally for myself, it's not really well organized in the slightest – it will more than likely read as nothing more than a stream of consciousness as I was literally adding and deleting things as I went along, so I won't be surprised if this ends up confusing some of you. If it does, sorry, but unfortunately I wasn't really interested in making it all that much cleared. If you do have questions, feel free to PM and I'll do my best to explain.

Due to the amount of material I had, my outline is divided into two sections: the first is the outline for how the battle of Actium itself would have gone, while the second outline deals directly with the character arcs. There will be some overlap because, like I said, this sheet was more of a brainstorming sheet.

Note: I think I would like to do a rewrite of this story at some point in the future, a redux version so to speak, and if I do so, it will more than likely follow the same events as laid out here. Obviously, this outline will spoil everything I had planned, so if you're the type that doesn't like spoilers, maybe skip this chapter? (But then again, it will be months, at earliest, before any sort of redux version of this story appears, so perhaps you'll have forgotten everything by then?)

Note: because this website is kind of dumb, the format of this chapter is all screwed up (I had everything in bulletin points, as I didn't realize they wouldn't show up.) So, scattered around this chapter are little excepts and scenes I had written for myself to be used at a latter date. Because of the formatting issues, and just to make things a little bit easier to read, I'm going to make those excepts **bold.**

* * *

Battle of Actium Outline

Chapter 45 (because that was the one I had most mapped out)

\- Characters: Tariq and Zelda

= First half of chapter would have involved an attempted night assault on UNSC lines in the south as per 'Oteree's renewed offensive to try and buy more time

= Due to damage due to his tank earlier in the day, Tariq is on the frontline, both to deliver ammo and visit his friend Chenko when the attack begins

 **(Beside him, Tariq could hear Chenko whispering, "Steel Rain, this is Checkpoint Four: fire mission. Requesting one round, illumination, at target concentration Delta."**

 **Tariq silently flicked the safety off the machine gun as he waited for the shell to arrive. Gradually, he became aware of a low whistling noise filling the air as the illumination round passed by overhead, before there was a mute _pop_ as the flare ignited, lighting up the sky –**

 **\- as well as illuminating the three hundred some odd Covenant soldiers crawling on their bellies through the snow in their direction less than a hundred meters away.**

 **Tariq didn't hesitated: he laid into the trigger.**

 **"All stations, all stations, this is Dragoon 2-2: CONTACT!" Chenko screamed into the radio as the entire Covenant force, realizing they had been compromised, immediately returned fire. "Covenant infantry in the open less than one hundred meters away, I say again, ONE HUNDRED METERS! All units, FIRE AT WILL! Break, break! Steel Rain, this is Checkpoint Four: I got Covenant infantry in the open less than a hundred meters away from my pos, requesting immediate fire support on previously established targets Alpha through Echo. All batteries, FIRE FOR EFFECT!")**

\- Tariq is forced to relocate the machine gun several times as the Covenant attempt to outflank them to the left

 **("Oh, shit!" he heard Contreras yell. "Sergeant, we gotta displace! Covenant are trying to outflank us on the left!"**

 **"Son of a bitch!" Tariq yelped as he hurriedly tossed the remainder of his belt over the top of the machine gun, then lifted the entire weapon off its tripod. "Corporal, get the tripod. Benson! Get the ammo! Move you motherfuckers, MOVE!")**

\- Eventually though, he starts to run low on ammo, sends Benson to go get more, but Benson never returns so he sends Contreras after him, but before Contreras can return, Tariq runs out of MG ammo and is forced to resort to his SMG

\- Section would have ended with Chenko calling for an airstrike right on top of UNSC positions as Covenant are about to overrun them

\- Leads to second half of chapter involving Zelda

\- Zelda and his squadron have just pulled out of their bombing run when they receive word from the AWACS an entire battalion of Covenant armor has just left the city and is moving to support the attack

\- Ordered to intercept

\- Zelda and his squadron move in, only to immediately get hit by all sorts of AA: this column is heavily protected by all the AA Wraiths the Covenant hadn't used to repel the bombers earlier that morning

\- JT gets hit, but manages to crash land his bird in the middle of the field

\- Bellum wants the Army to send out an armored platoon to try and rescue him, but Army reports they're getting hammered and rescue is out of the question

= So instead, she calls in search and rescue (UNSCAF PJs) for help

\- While they wait for help to arrive, Zelda and his squadron do their best to provide close air support for their friend

\- Fortunately, JT's experience as a tactical air controller proves very helpful in directing the Broadswords' firepower

\- Chapter would have probably ended with Zelda and the others realizing their firepower isn't enough to hold back the Covenant forever, and that JT will be overrun before the PJs can arrive, so he calls a strike on himself

= As part of the character arc, I was thinking Zelda would have been the only one in the squadron willing to do it

* * *

After Chapter 45 (at this point, it would be morning of May 8 or Day 3 of the battle – night attack took place close to midnight)

\- Time skip forward by four hours: battle has finally ended with a UNSC victory, though it had been a near thing as Covies had been able to overrun the first two UNSC defensive lines

\- Still, damage they caused has thrown the Army into disarray, and General Valerian decides to delay her attack in order to reorganize

\- Decision pisses Athena off so she decides, if the Army won't attack, she will

\- Reverses earlier orders for Northern Forces to stand down, and instead resume offensive actions

\- Unlike day before, Covenant resistance is limited because, in order to support the night offensive, 'Oteree had stripped his northern forces of most of their strength, leaving but a skeleton crew to hold back the UNSC Marines

\- The Marines' advance is making good headway when they're accidently bombed by the UNSCAF

= Unbeknownst to them, due to a miscommunication (as a result of Athena being forced to move some of her staff officers to the field to make up for the slack,) UNSCAF was operating under the assumption that the Marines were planning on holding their position, like they originally said they would

= As for why the Marines weren't informed that the Air Force was planning on resuming their bombing campaign, Athena suspects it's because Iqbal wanted to "win the battle by himself" and "show he didn't need the ground pounders' support"

\- In the ensuing chaos, the Covenant counterattack because, as it turns out, not all of the UNSC battalions had actually received the initial order to advance (again, due to the lack of staff officers,) leaving all sorts of holes in the line and allowing a number of units to get outflanked

\- In disarray, Marines fall back to their original launch point

\- Because of this, Fields steps in and orders all ground forces, north and south, to hold position until they can get reorganized

* * *

\- Six hours later, UNSC finally get their shit together and attack with their armored units from the south, while the Marines hold the north

\- With the Covenant having exhausted themselves over the last few days, resistance is as fierce as always, but within a couple of hours, UNSC forces have finally broken through and forward recon elements of the UNSC Army is reaching the edge of Byzas -

\- When Lepidus' vanguard arrives in system, far earlier than ONI expected (ONI was expecting a three day grace period – i.e., Covie reinforcements wouldn't arrive until the tenth if May. They in fact arrive on the eight)

\- Brushing aside the surprised UNSC Navy, the new Covenant forces start racing dropships and corvettes to the battlefield, in some cases, literally dropping on top of UNSC armored columns in the south

\- Realizing they're about to get cut off, UNSC armor begins "advancing in another direction" (i.e., they start to withdraw)

\- Kicks off another fierce battle where UNSC attacks the new Covenant forces in order to ensure their armor is able to retire from the battlefield

* * *

\- Several hours later (mid-evening probably) on 8 May, UNSC is left kicking their wounds, trying to figure out what to do now.

\- Army has gone into resupply mode, and is unwilling to attack, especially since their armored brigades (3/15 and 1/31 AD) were both badly maul attempting to keep their withdraw corridor open

\- Athena decides to launch a couple of battalion sized "recon by fires," to roughly determine just how many reinforcements had arrived

\- All recon by fires are swiftly and brutally repelled, and UNSC High Command is forced to face the truth: the Covenant have arrived in force, and the UNSC is unlike to be able to eliminate them from the surface now; they need to adopt a new strategy. Operation SUDDEN PURGE II is officially over, and has ended in defeat

* * *

Day 5 of the Battle of Actium (Roughly)

\- Lepidus finally arrives in system and formally relieves 'Oteree.

\- Last few days, battle lines have been mostly static aside from constant probing attacks and artillery dials

\- UNSC has been resupplying while Covenant have been waiting for Lepidus to arrive before making their move

\- After getting briefed on the situation, Lepidus assumes a new strategy: can't advance in the East due to Covenant lack of experience with amphibious assaults, and doesn't want to attack north because of the city, therefore main effort into the breakout should be directed south

\- Deploys bulk of his infantry and armor to the south, however decides to divert most of his Jackals and Skirmishers to the west, the mountains , to take advantage of their natural leaping ability for a potential outflank if they can break through the UNSC lines

\- As part of the change, Lepidus replaces almost all Elites with Brutes (aside from those in the west,) and almost orders them all back to their ships to sit out the battle (as nothing would embarrass them more than having to sit out a battle of this magnitude,) when his brother Paullus points out it's probably a bad idea to have a massive amount of pissed off Elite warriors sitting around not doing anything while the Brutes fought and died

\- Realizes he's right, Lepidus decides due to the position of the UNSC Marines in the north, they're too close and they stand the risk of threatening his landing site.

\- Decides the city needs to get secured after all, and task 'Oteree with that responsibility

\- However, he pulls all of their armor, Hunter, and artillery support, most of their air and Jackal support, and only leaves a token Grunt support with the hopes that the vast majority of Elite warriors will simply get killed off by the humans and solving the problem for him

\- At the same time all this ongoing, the UNSC is busy reorganizing

\- All line units that started the battle (Tariq's armored unit, Amber's ship) are getting rotated off the line for repairs or replacements, or they're going to reserve. In the north, all Army units are replaced by Marine units, with Adel's battalion (2/77) getting folded back into the rest of the 77th MAR RGT to act as regimental reserve.

\- However, two units would not be rotated off: Marcus' unit (because, theoretically, they haven't seen much combat) and Zelda's squadron (because the UNSC can afford to rotate their pilots off the line)

* * *

Week Two of the Battle of Actium

This entire week would have been devoted to character development, with the battle itself serving as more of a backdrop. Some notable events that would have occurred (not in order)

\- Selene's part in the story would have been wrapped up

\- As part of the reorganization, Tariq would be promoted to Staff Sergeant and give command of his own tank

\- His unit would also be reflagged as "53rd Armored Cavalry Regiment" and assigned directly to the Corps level

\- Zelda's squadron would been combined with several others in order to bring them back up to strength, however he and the others would see no relief

\- At some point towards the end of the week, Marcus' convoy would get ambushed, resulting in Orlović being KIA

\- Soon afterwards, Marcus finds out due to battle damage, his entire brigade is getting swapped with a different Colonial Militia unit from the other side of the planet, based out of Astoria Levant – Marcus' hometown. Marcus is finally going home

\- Amber's budding relationship with Leporidae would have been explored, though it would have gone sour almost immediately

\- Zek and his Lance would continue to fight against UNSC forces in the mountains

\- With more reinforcements arriving, General Valerian would have been promoted, and put in charge of the newly "Eleventh Army," consisting of all UNSC forces in the south

\- At some point, Lepidus and Tartarus (the Chieftain of all Brutes) would have a conversation and it would be revealed that neither Brutes like each other, at all, though Lepidus follows Tartarus because the Covenant insisted they wanted him in charge

\- The heavy losses 'Oteree and his forces are starting to take while trying to capture Byzas would make him start to question whether his devotion to the Covenant cause was actually worth it

* * *

End of Week 2

Towards the end of Week Two, the focus of the story would have switched back to the battle itself

\- For many days now, all Covenant forces have been attempting to break through UNSC defensive lines with minimal success

\- Most notably, Zek and his Lance in the west, fighting in the mountains

\- Towards the end of the week, they get yanked back in preparation for another offensive, and Zek finds out the entire battle on the mountains has actually been one massive distraction

= In reality, Lepidus knew he wasn't going to be able to break through the UNSC lines without something drastic, so while the Jackals and Skirmishers have been keeping the humans distracted, this entire time he's been having all the Covenant Drones dig a tunnel straight through the Mountain under human positions

= Using a captured MOAB (which the humans had lost back on Day Two while attempting to bring down one of the cruisers – see chapter 43) Lepidus blows a massive hole in the human lines (à la the Battle of the Crater of the American Civil War or the Battle of Hill 60 of WW1)

= The operation is successful and for the first time in two weeks, Covenant have manage to break through

\- On the UNSC's, the situation is dire: because the Covenant had arrayed the bulk of their forces in the south, the UNSC had assumed any breakout attempt would take place there and had arranged their forces accordingly

\- With the breakout occurring in the west, the UNSC Army is left scrambling to respond with what limited forces they have, and immediately deploy the "53rd Armored Cavalry Regiment" to try and slow them down (Tariq's unit) while they scramble to find more forces they can use to respond

\- To further keep the humans off balanced, Lepidus decides to open another front: he sends his brother, Paullus, and a separate task force with orders to force another landing on the other side of the planet – on the continent the humans call "Levant" and in the town the humans call "Astoria"

 **Book 2 ends here**

* * *

Second interlude

As with the first interlude, this interlude would involve Naomii Ichi

\- Naomii has not been handling the disappearance of her sister well; the lack of information and the uncertainty of whether or not her sister is even alive is keeping her awake at night

\- Finally, she decides to do some fact finding herself

\- She notices that her sister's commanding officer, one Lieutenant Lancelot, has been reported as WIA and is in the hospital, thus available to be contacted

\- She calls him up, hoping to find some information, at least how and when her sister disappeared

\- Only, during the course of the conversation, she realizes Lancelot didn't even know her sister had been declared MIA, revealing to her that whatever her sister had been doing before going MIA, she had not been doing it with her unit

\- Lancelot promises to do some digging and offers to call her back in a couple days when he's found something, only he immediately calls her later that night

\- He reveals to Naomii that as soon as he started asking questions, an Army intelligence officer named "Holland" immediately told him to stop

\- Reveals to Naomii that whatever her sister was up to, it had to have been for ONI to warrant that kind of reaction

\- Naomii realizes her sister's disappearance might actually be a bigger story than she realizes.

* * *

 **Book 3/Week 3**

This book would have dealt with the repercussions of the Covenant's breakout. Fighting continues in the Thracia Province as UNSC forces in the south struggle to contain the Covenant attack, which is rapidly turning into a sort of "Operation Bagration or Operation Cobra"-isk offensives (both of WW2 – Soviet and Western Allied operations, respectively that took place in 1944 and saw successful encirclements of massive Wehrmacht formations.) At the same time, UNSC Marines still occupying the northern half of Byzas are faced with a renewed attack by Sangheili soldiers as the Covenant work on bypassing the city's defenses entirely by encircling the city instead.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, Covenant forces are able to brush aside light UNSC resistance and establish a beachhead on the surface, leaving UNSC General Jason Langley to struggling to continue the situation. The problem is, unlike Byzas which is a heavily built up city surrounded by large open fields perfect for maneuver warfare, Astoria is mostly suburban, meaning it's hard to establish hardpoints for defense. To help out with the defense, Langley redeploys several fighter squadrons from Hellas (including Zelda's,) and converts some logistical units into infantry (including Marcus')

Notable Events

\- With the tides rapidly turning against them, UNSC Navy finds itself running low on munitions, so they send the UNSC _Gabrielle_ to the rings of Tenedos, where the second major space battle for the system took place, and the corpses of several UNSC ships are, most notably, the Air Force carrier UNSC _Pégoud,_ which had been destroyed mostly before it could fight

= A boarding team consisting of at least Amber, Poolsie, and Leporidae are sent on board, only they find out, they aren't the only ones there: unbeknownst to the UNSC, the ship had been taken over by Covenant Drones. Using the corpses of all the dead humans as food, the Drones had established a hive aboard the ship (which is where Lepidus got all his Drones for his tunneling operation)

= Amber and company soon find themselves cut off from the _Gabrielle_ , and with the help of a surviving Air Force officer from the original crew (who had been hiding and evading the Drones the entire three weeks,) the UNSC is able to get off the ship, have the _Gabrielle_ completely destroy the remains of the _Pégoud_ (and kill all the Drones,) as well as salvage a handful of ordnance including two Havok nukes

\- Early in the week, Zelda's squadron is redeployed to Levant to help out. They fly there, but halfway, they land on an Actium Navy aircraft carrier to refuel (as all Air Force refueling tankers are too vulnerable to Covenant air attacks and are grounded. While on the ship, the carrier is attacked by Covenant fighters

\- At some point mid-week, Marcus comes across his parents' home – his parents aren't there, having successfully been evacuated off world the day before and in relief, Marcus falls asleep in his own bedroom. When he wakes up several hours later, he finds out that during the night, UNSC forces pulled out from the area, accidentally leaving him behind and now Marcus is stuck behind enemy lines (more details in character outline)

Other notable events

\- Marcus Olsen is Killed in Action

\- Link "Zelda" Kuang is Killed in Action

\- Paullus, son of Amilia is felled in battle

* * *

End of Week 3/Beginning of Week 4 (Date was undecided)

By the end of the week, its clear Levant will fall so rather than drag out the inevitable, General Langley makes the decision to abandon the entire continent, pulling out what units he can. About a quarter of the units are redeployed to the island of Cyprium, which is subtly being changed into an evacuation point off world, while the rest are deployed to Hellas to bolster the falling UNSC lines there. Obviously it would take too long to go over the ocean, so through some unspecified operation, Langley is able to use space ships to pick up the forces, and ship them over to Hellas right under the Covenant's noses, infuriating Lepidus because 'Oteree was supposed to have dealt with the UNSC Navy already.

Because of that, and because of the influx of troops onto the field, Lepidus makes the decision to slow the ground offensive and place priority on destroying the rest of the UNSC Navy.

While this is going on, High Command is beginning to privately admit Actium is lost, and orders the mandatory evacuation of all remaining civilians on the planet, including those in employment with the UNSC armed forces, as well as beginning to evacuate high ranking officers.

* * *

Week 4/Mid-Week 4 (again, date was undecided)

\- Two/Three days after fall of Levant, UNSC Navy under heavy attack by Covenant fleet, and has been non-stop since fall of Levant. UNSC Navy warships are being grinded down, their crews worn, including the UNSC _Gabrielle._ During one such engagement the _Gabrielle_ accidently moves out of formation and instantly swarmed by Covenant fighters. Having never repaired much of their damage taken at the beginning of the battle, the _Gabrielle_ is soon falling. They attempt to flee through the atmosphere of Actium in order to try and escape, but it's clear is a lost cause and soon the order "Abandon Ship" is given

\- Most of the crew leave, despite knowing they will be easy pickings for the pursuing fighters

\- However Poolsie decides she doesn't want to leave – she rather die aboard the ship

= At first, Amber tries to convince her to risk it, but Poolsie is adamant, and Amber quickly realizes that if they actually stay aboard the ship, they could control some of the turrets and try to give the rest of the crew some covering fire

\- Both she and Poolsie stay at their stations as the _Gabrielle_ starts to make it's finally dive towards the planet

\- As the ship crashes into the Haemus Mountains, just west of the city of Byzas, Amber is knocked unconscious

\- When she wakes, it's much later, and she finds Poolsie out cold, with her legs trapped under some rubble

\- Amber attempts to free her, but she can't do it on her own and she quickly hears a noise

= At first she's worried it's the Covenant, and she arms herself with a nearby pistol, but it turns out it's only a UNSC salvaging crew, led by one Army Colonel Akono Menteith, one of which includes an Army EOD technician, Sergeant Ducky Krios – Amber's aunt (who was mentioned all the way back in chapter 1)

= Amber and her aunt are of course delighted to see each other alive, after all this time, but their reunion is cut short by the arrival of the Covenant

= With the salvaging crew's help, Poolsie (still out cold) is recovered, and they evacuate the remains of the ship.

= Among the things the crew was able to salvage are two Havok nukes they were able to rip out from the ship's armory

* * *

At this point, the rest of the story is mostly unorganized. At some point, the Covenant finally get into a position where Byzas is about to be encircled, and all non-essentially personnel are evacuated, including Amber and Poolsie. Adel and most of the Marines are killed in action trying to prevent the city from being encircled, and unfortunately they're unsuccessful. With no reserves left, Athena decides to take what remains of her staff (including General Lysander,) and mount an offensive against the Covenant encirclement in an attempt to open it up again. She is unsuccessful, and killed in action along with most of her staff.

At that point, the only remaining ranking officer is one Colonel Akono Menteith of the 53rd Armored Division. Realizing the city has essentially become a death trap, rather than try and break out, he's going to try and do as much damage to the Covenant so he rallies the remainder of the Northern forces, and actually goes on the attack with the two Havok nukes he managed to salvage from the _Gabrielle,_ manages to drive a wedge into the Covenant's original landing site, where's he's mortally wounded by Covenant Jackal Zek. Unfortunately for Zek, Menteith still has enough strength to pull the trigger, and he detonates the nukes, instantly killing himself and Zek.

 **End of Book 3**

* * *

Interlude 3

Naomii receives confirmation that her sister was killed in action and in fact, had been killed on the first day of the battle (meaning the entire month she and her parents had been hoping that her sister was still alive was in vain.)

Unfortunately for Naomii, this confirmation does not come with any more information (what her sister was doing, why it took so longer for her death to be confirmed, why and how did she die, etc.) so, Naomii decides there's only one way to find out

Interlude ends with Naomii meeting an Army recruiter ( **"… one way or another, Naomii was going to find some answers."** )

* * *

 **Book 4? (or Post-Mortem; wasn't sure what I wanted to call it)**

Beginning of Week 5

\- With the radiation and fallout from the Havok nukes rapidly covering the entire planet, the battle of Actium is all but over as battle lines have collapsed, and strongpoints destroyed

\- Instead, UNSC is steadily working on trying to evacuate the last remainder of their troops but it's difficult as communications are sporadic, plus the Covenant are everywhere

\- Tariq and what's left of his unit are attempting to fight their way through various Covenant formations in order to reach the closest evacuation site

\- By the time they reach there, they find out that the site is one of the last remaining sites on the planet yet to be overrun by the Covenant

\- Due to some sort of mistake, a large number of civilians are still there, and are trying to get off world as well, but there's not a lot of transports left as the Covenant keep shooting them down (details as to why the civilians were there had yet to be worked out)

\- Due to some events that occurred on Draco III and that had been haunted Tariq (see character outline for more details,) Tariq is able to motivate he's comrades into staying behind to try and buy time for the civilians to escape first

\- They're able to hold the Covenant back long enough for the transports to return, but as the soldiers begin to evacuate and there's only one transport left, they realize there's a flaw in their plan: without them, there's nothing stopping the Covenant from destroying the transport on the ground

\- With that in mind, Tariq volunteers to stay behind and act as a rear guard, to try and hold the Covenant back long enough for the last transport to leave

\- He delays them for several minutes, long enough for the last transport to rocket off into orbit, and Tariq is killed, finally at peace with himself

* * *

 **Last Days**

June 12, 2545 – Last UNSC evacuation site overrun; UNSC Navy and Air Force officially cut off from remaining forces on surface; UNSC fleet begins final withdraw from system

June 12 to 15 – Long range satellites show fighting continues on the surface as last remaining humans trapped on colony opt to go down swinging

June 15, 2545 – Glassing of Actium begins in earnest; UNSC High Command officially declares the colony of Actium to be lost. The battle is officially over.

 **(End Story)**

* * *

Some of you may note that there's a lot of detail at the beginning of the outline, not a whole lot in the middle, and then a lot more at the end. That's usually how I work: I figure out where the beginning is, then I decide how the ending will turn out, then (and usually I'm starting to write the story at this point) I try and work out how I going to have to get from point A to B.

Because a lot of these ideas weren't necessarily worked out or fleshed out yet, things most likely would have been deleted, added, or shuffled around to fit inside the story better.

* * *

 **Character Fates**

Note: out of context like this, a lot of these ideas are probably going to sound very cheesy. Again, this was my brain storming sheet, so some things may have stayed, other things might have been deleted, while others would depend on context to make it work, it's just one of those things I wouldn't be able to fully work out until I got to that point.

* * *

 **Main Characters**

Officer Selene Riddle

Okay, so Selene's story was actually going to be the most complex story of all the characters here and completely different from everyone else, but I thought it would be fun to try which is why I included her in the first place. However, trying to fit her arc within the premise of this story actually proved to be the most difficult part, which is why if a redux version does get down, Selene will more than likely be one of those characters that get cut.

So, starting from where we left off on chapter 44. The woman and two kids currently with Selene and Shin was supposed to be a woman named Kathryn Paxton and her two kids. Kathryn, as it would have turned out, is the wife of Colonel Gregor Paxton (who's first and last appearance was in chapter 14,) making Kathryn the woman who's car was run over by Tariq and his tank back in chapter 7.

At any case, Selene and Shin figure out they've been accidently going in the wrong direction, so they try to orient themselves properly. They start to head north, only to run into another group of survivors: a combat Marine Captain who had been on leave when the invasion began (name yet undecided,) his girlfriend Jess, and maybe one other survivor (undecided?) Being an officer, the Captain immediately takes charge of the entire group but much to Selene's surprise, the Captain declares its too dangerous to try and make it through Covenant lines by themselves and that their best bet is to stay where they are and wait for rescue. Shin protests, and at first the group is split between following Shin or the Captain, but at this point Selene is realizing just how unstable Shin actually is, and decides this is her best chance to distance herself from him and sides with the Captain. With her being a cop (and a figure of authority,) that's enough to tie the scales in favor of the Captain, much to Shin's irritation.

Selene's story at this point would have been mostly dropped until week 2 of the invasion, which was intended to most being dedicated to her. A couple days later, the group has mostly settled into their routine. Shin, despite a threats to the contrary, has decided to stick around though much to the Captain's ire, Shin was somehow able to seduce Jess, to the point she's spending more time with Shin then the Captain.

Over the course of the week, several bits of information would have been revealed through various conversations. In no particular order:

\- For someone who is a combat veteran and survivor of multiple battles, the Captain knows surprisingly little about the Covenant and their tactics, especially compared to Shin

\- The reason why Selene left Reach is because she's actually in exile: when she was younger, she had a fiancé. One day, after returning from a shopping trip with her best friend, she found her fiancé in bed with another woman. In a fit of rage, Selene pulled out a gun and tried to murder them both, but fortunately her best friend was there to stop her. Unfortunately, the woman her fiancé was in bed with turns out to be the only daughter of some high ranking politician, who wants to see Selene burn for what she tried to do. Fortunately for Selene, her best friend happens to be related to the CEO of the biggest corporation on Reach, so a deal is made instead: the incident gets buried (because no one wants a scandal in their hands,) the charges against Selene are dropped, and in return, Selene leaves Reach and never returns.

= Incident is important because Selene really regrets what she tried to do and as a result, lost a lot of trust in herself, something that subconsciously effects her to this day which is why, when the Covenant landed, Selene automatically began to defer to Shin's authority even though she could easily tell how unstable he is.

\- This is told in a private conversation with the Captain, who admits that Jess wasn't actually his girlfriend, just a fellow survivor that he encountered though he asks that Selene keep that information to herself.

Other information that would have been revealed:

\- The reason why Shin was in military prison was because he accidently killed a kid. His convoy had just been ambushed by Innies, they were taking machine gun and RPG fire, multiple casualties, when he spotted movement, turned around and just started shooting, only to find out later it was just some kid running for cover.

\- Jess is actually a uniform groupie, as in someone who's obsessed with men in uniform which is why she's been bouncing between Shin and the Captain (it would also be hinted that she was the same woman Zelda had been with during his introduction in chapter 1.)

\- Shin's ship, the UNSC _Richard Bong,_ has actually been in dry docks for _two weeks_ , which is in direct contrast to Shin's insistence that he's only been in the city for _one day_.

Throughout this week, it would have been clear there's a lot of tension between Shin and the Captain, and that both are trying their best to extend their influence over the group, and Selene is doing _her_ best to maintain the peace.

Unfortunately, things come to a head when one morning, the survivors wake up to find Jess dead with multiple stab wounds to the chest. The wounds match the cuts delivered by a military-style KaBar which, naturally, the Captain is the only who has. To Selene, this entire situation smells of a setup, but then Shin reveals his trump card: as it turns out, the "Captain," isn't actually a captain at all and just some random loser who's been posing as a Marine in order to try and impress everyone, and has actually never been in combat. Because of that, everyone begins to believe that this dude murdered Jess in a fit of jealous rage, however Selene, knowing how unstable Shin is, doesn't believe it and still believes this is a setup.

It's at this point, Shin reveals he knows exactly why Selene left Reach; as it turns out, he was eavesdropping when she told the "Captain" what had happened to her. Shin uses this as proof that Selene isn't someone to be trusted either, so Selene tried to counter by pointing out Shin has made mistakes too, what about that kid he shot back in Alluvion. However, Shin then reveals he didn't tell her the whole story: as it turns out, military investigators concluded the shooting was justified because video evidence showed the kid was _armed_ , meaning the kid had actually been one of the Innies who had been ambushed Shin and his unit.

At this point, the rest of the survivors are ready to murder the "Captain" for what he "did" and there's nothing Selene can do to stop them (having been thoroughly discredited,) however Shin steps in and convinces everyone the best course of action is to simply leave the "Captain" for the Covenant to deal with, and that they need to try and head back to friendly lines. The group agrees, so they pack up and head out, leaving the Captain behind to die.

The next day, however, they run into a group of Army soldiers, led by Colonel Akono Menteith, who have been operating behind enemy lines since they were cut off on the first day. Menteith has been spending this entire time gathering his strength, as well as what few civilian survivors he could find, and coincidently, he's about to lead an attack on Covenant lines to try and break through to friendly positions. Selene and her group are of course delighted, but Selene does notice Shin doesn't look happy at all. Before she can ask though, Menteith finds out Kathryn is the wife of Colonel Paxton, and he's left with the heavy duty of informing her and her kids that their husband and dad was actually killed in action two weeks ago (Selene would have had a conversation with one of the kids, where they would have revealed how much they were looking forward to seeing their dad again.) The family is naturally devastated by the news, and everyone separates to give them a bit of privacy when –

 **("There was a shuffling of feet behind her and Selene reflexively turned around.**

 **The last thing she saw was Shin swinging the extendable baton she had given him weeks ago at her face.**

 **And then everything went dark.")**

So, sometime later, Selene regains consciousness, only to find herself tied up and back at the shelter she and the other survivors had been hiding in for the last few weeks. Only, the only person around is Shin.

As it turns out (and some readers had actually begun to guess this,) Shin is a psychopath and a serial killer. He first entered the city of Byzas two weeks prior to the invasion (when the UNSC _Bong_ had arrived for repairs,) and he immediately noticed Selene, who had been helping with security at the time. Deciding then that Selene was to be his next victim, Shin had spent those two weeks stalking her (which is actually how he knew about her past, not because he had been eavesdropping,) and why he has been so knowledgeable about the city. The day he was arrested was the first day he was going to try and seduce her (as an apology for his "accidentally" insults, he had been planning on taking her out to dinner,) but the Covenant invasion had thrown a wrench in his plans. Since then, he'd been doing his best to isolate her by any means possible such as: murdering Kingsley (the choking noise she heard when she first woke up all the way back in chapter 26 was Shin strangling Kingsley to death in his sleep,) deliberately leading her away from friendly lines (which is why they had been going south, not north, as mentioned in chapter 45,) murdering Jess and framing the Captain for it (to discredit him and get the group moving,) and finally, just outright kidnapping her (because he's getting frustrated.)

 **("But now that we're _finally_ alone," Shin said with a terrifying grin as he pulled out a small medical scalpel from his pocket. "We're going to have a little bit of… _fun._ "**

 **"Well," he said after a moment of thought. "Fun for _me._ For you? Decidedly less so…")**

Naturally, Selene is able to fight back as Shin hadn't bother tying her feet **("It's going to be so much more satisfying when I break you!" Shin yelled as he chased after her)** , when she accidentally finds a KaBar half buried in the snow: it's the same knife Shin had used to murder Jess (they hadn't been able to find it earlier and that was because Shin claimed the Captain had tried to get rid of the evidence.) Using the knife, Selene to able to free herself and she gets into a fight with Shin which ends when Selene is able to cut his Achilles tendon. With Shin crippled, rather than kill him right then and there, Selene decides to do the exact same thing he had done to the Captain: leave him there for the Covenant. Shin tells her that's a mistake

 **("because I survived the Covenant before. You think I can't survive them now? You don't kill me, right here and now, I promise you, I will hunt you down to the ends of the galaxy, and I _will_ find you. And once I do, we're gonna finish what we started here," Shin swore. "Do you hear me, Riddle? Nobody gets away from me, _NOBODY!"_**

 **Selene didn't say a word. She just kept walking.)**

Having escaped Shin, Selene tries to run to the spot she remembered where Menteith and his men were supposed to be, knowing that they would have left already when, to her surprise, she runs into the man himself

 **("Colonel?" she gasped. "What are you doing here?"**

 **"Kathryn's daughter noticed both you and Sergeant Shin were missing," Menteith distractedly replied as he and his men sprinted down the street. "I'm not leaving civilians behind ever again [more on that in Tariq's section], so I ordered we go looking for you. Where's Sergeant Shin?"**

 **Selene automatically opened her mouth, but then hesitated.**

 **"I don't know," she heard herself say. "He wasn't with me.")**

Later, Selene is in orbit, having been successfully evacuated off world. She's talking to Colonel Kendrick, head of AFIC, because she wants him to know who Staff Sergeant Shin really is, and what he did. Kendrick promises her he'll look into it, and make sure justice is delivered to "all of Shin's past victims"

Later, Selene us onboard the UNSC _Gerald_ _O. Young_ , an Air Force troop transport (and the same ship that originally brought Moss and his unit to Actium [see MIA chapter 1] about to wake her first hot shower in two weeks when

 **("Officer Riddle."**

 **Selene immediately stiffened. No… it couldn't be.**

 **Slowly, Selene lifted her head and looked in the mirror. To her horror, through the steam filled glass, she could see Shin standing in the doorway behind her, looking no worse for wear, with a wicked grin on his face.**

 **"No…," Selene heard herself whispering. "No, it can't be."**

 **Shin grinned and leaves forward, close enough Selene could almost feel his breath on the back of her neck. "Like I told you: I survived the Covenant three times already. What makes you think I wouldn't survive this?"**

 **"No," Selene whimpered, closing her eyes and shaking her head. "No, you're not real!"**

 **"…I will hunt you down, and I _will_ find you…"**

 **Selene whirled around, ready to strike only… there was no one there. She glanced in the mirror but… Shin was gone, leaving no trace of him having ever been there. And yet, she could still hear his voice echoing in her head.**

 **"…and when I do, we're gonna _finish_ , what we started here.")**

So, that would have ended Selene's part, but there would have been one small post scene afterwards: in a meeting with several Air Force generals, including Iqbal, Kendrick would reveal he actually did do what he promised Selene: he started looking into Shin's file and what he found greatly disturbed him.

 **("According to this, the man was supposed to be rotting in military prison on Fallow, because he was convicted of executing two suspected Innies," Kendrick pointed out. "He was only released because of the Covenant invasion, with the understanding that the murders were done in a fit of passion, and not a sign of systemic abuse. But since then, he's the lead suspect in the disappearance of three different women, and not only that, there's apparently evidence he murdered his own _father._ Everything about this man is a red flag. He should have never been allowed in the military, he should have never been allowed to _stay,_ and he most definitely should have never been allowed in a position of authority. According to his file, he was a military _police_ officer for Christ's sake!"**

 **Kendrick paused in his tirade to gauge his superiors' reactions, only to find none of them looked surprised in the least bit, and with a sinking sensation, Kendrick had a feeling he knew why. "But all of you already knew that…")**

Conversation goes on to reveal that, yes, Air Force Command was very much aware of who Shin was, and what he had done, however he wasn't kicked out for one simple reason:

 **("The man survived three separate Covenant invasion, Richard," Iqbal stated. "How many airmen do you know that are capable of doing something like that, Colonel? Not only that, the man was fluent in Sangheili. How many airmen, officer or enlisted, have you encountered that have that level of experience and knowledge?"**

 **"All due respect, sir, but that's not the point – "**

 **"That _is_ the point," Iqbal snapped. "Colonel, in case you haven't noticed, we're losing this war. Every _day_ we lose more and more ground. We need soldiers like Shin, experienced soldiers, to hold back the tide. We could not afford to lose him."**

 **"What about his victims, huh?" Kendrick fired back. He tapped a few keys in his data pad and pulled up pictures of all of Shin's known victims, including his would-be victim, Officer Selene Riddle. "You look at these pictures, sir, and you tell me: were these lives worth Shin's knowledge. His experience? Tell me."**

 **Iqbal slammed his fist on the table. "Look outside the window, Kendrick. Do you see the mountain of bodies the Covenant have left behind? The innocents? The children? Billions have already died, and billions more will probably go too before this war ends. In light of that, you _tell me_ , Colonel: what's another six bodies. Another seven? In an ocean of bodies, that's not even a _drop."_**

 **"Is that what you tell yourself, sir, when you're about to go to sleep?" Kendrick quietly retorted.)**

Anyways, to make a long story short (too late,) Kendrick leaves the meeting pissed off as hell but realizes Iqbal has a point: they can't afford to lose experienced soldiers like Shin. At the same time, as commanders, they need to make sure the rest of their men can work without having to look over their shoulder to see if their comrades are going to stab them in the backs (literally,) so he'll start to pen the idea of bringing "Penal Battalions" back where soldiers who are too dangerous to intermingle with normal people, yet too valuable to simply kill, would be part of the same unit which could then be used in both menial labor roles and suicide missions, thus letting the Covenant solve the problem for them. Penal Battalions in turn would play a major role in a future Halo story involving Moss, and that's all I've got to say about that.

Now, as you guys can see, Selene's story would have been rather complicated and out of all the major characters, she probably could have stood to have her own story. The reason why she's in _this_ one is because this wasn't what her story originally going to be. Originally, I had something a bit simpler for her: Shin was going to be the tired, cynical veteran who just wants to keep his head down, while Selene was going to be the cheerful, optimistic lady. During the course of the story, Selene would help Shin become motivated once more through her actions, while Selene, in the fact of all the horrors she was witnessing, would end up being the tired cynical one (so, their roles would reverse.)

However, as soon as I started writing, I felt my original plan was too boring so, going in line with the idea of this being an experimental story, I thought I would try my hand at a horror/mystery story, with the battle being more of a backdrop. (And it would go along with the idea mentioned in the first chapter, that not all soldiers were heroes; they were just people, and just because they wear a uniform, doesn't make them a good person.)

Of course, trying to integrate that into the story proved way more difficult than I had imagined, and one of the major reasons why I'm going "nope, this story needs a rewrite, if only to be able to cleanly cut Selene's part out entirely." As you'll see, the other character arcs aren't so elaborate, and a bit integrated.

* * *

Private Marcus Olsen

Marcus' story is, in a nutshell, a sort of "coming of age story." Basically, what I had in mind was that his entire arc was all about learning how to be an effective soldier. Everything he learned in the beginning would later show up. For example, the medical scene in chapter 13 would later replay at a later chapter, where Marcus is the only one who can save someone else's life because he's the only one who knows how to apply a FAST1 kit. That sort of thing.

Some things that would have happened to him:

\- His relationship with Orlović would turn sour at some point, as Orlović starts to think Marcus is too much of a coward. This will later give Marcus a lot of problems after Orlović is KIA

\- Dresden's backstory would be revealed. Essentially, he was a quartermaster assigned to a Ranger regiment (notably, he was not a Ranger,) who, during a battle (which one was not yet decided,) they had a sort of "Black Hawk down" situation where they simply ran out of Rangers and all the sort guys volunteered to go help out, Dresden included. However, en route, their Falcon would get shot down by Covenant fuel rod teams, and Dresden would lose both his legs in the incident. He would have died there were it not for his older sister (who was a Ranger,) would lead her team and rescue everyone onboard before getting fatally wounded by a Brute warrior. The action would later earn her the Legion of Honor, much to Dresden's pride but unfortunately, his home life would suffer as his sister was definitely the favorite child and his father would later tell him that he had wished the sister had lived while Dresden had been the one to die (which is why Dresden ended up enlisting in the Colonial Militia)

\- A number of other lessons Marcus would learn. For example, I wanted to bring back the artillery scene so that Marcus would learn how to load and fire an artillery piece because…

Marcus's fate

\- As mentioned in the outline above, as some point Marcus would find himself back at his parents house, acting as an ad hoc rifleman. Due to exhaustion and confusion as a result of that, Marcus would accidentally get left behind and find himself behind enemy lines. He would have ended up running into a Pathfinder team (aka: a long range reconnaissance team; term is more intended to be in line with the way the British Army uses it, not the way the US Army does,) who inform him they're hunting a Brute chieftain who they think is in charge of this attack (in reality, they're hunting Paullus.)

\- Team eventually gets ambushed though, leaving Marcus as the only survivor

\- As he's wandering through one of the many battlefields, he unexpectedly finds Paullus and a number of other Brute chieftains having a briefing. Even better luck, there's a working 155mm howitzer nearby so Marcus, seeing his opportunity to save his hometown, starts lining up the shot. Just when he's about to pull the trigger though, he gets shot in the stomach by a random Jackal sniper that stumbles across him. In agony, Marcus accidentally falls in front of the breech block (meaning, he can't fire the howitzer as the recoil would force the metal block into his body and kill him.) However, Marcus realizes the gunshot managed to attract the attention of the Brutes, and they're starting to leave the area, and with the Jackal approaching to finish the job, Marcus realizes he has no choice so he fires the howitzer anyway. As expected, the howitzer breech block punches Marcus right in the chest, caving it in, but Marcus is able to survive long enough to see the shell land right in the middle of all the Brutes, killing a good number of them including Paullus. Then Marcus dies with a smile on his face.

* * *

1st Lieutenant Link "Zelda" Kuang

Zelda's story basically involves him reaching the breaking point. As we've seen so far, he's a rather arrogant pilot with the skills to back it up, which means he's never really been able to play well with others. The only real friend he has is Odessa, and that's it resulting in him being really isolated.

Some things that would have happened to him:

\- Minus Odessa, Bellum, and him, the rest of the squadron would slowly lose their lives in battle

\- Unlike the other characters, at no point will Zelda and his squadron mates ever get rotated off the line (because, as mentioned in outline above, with the Covenant hotly contesting the skies, UNSC can't afford to rotate pilots off the line they can everyone else.)

\- The constant fighting and loses start to take their strain, on everybody not just Zelda, but it's worse for Zelda because, unlike everyone else, he doesn't really have anyone who will be willing to support him (due to his isolation)

\- As kind of hinted at near the beginning of chapter 36, his isolation is more to do with the fact he has no social skills, and not because he doesn't like his teammates, so he feels guilty when he can't save them (or, as would have been shown in chapter 45 with JT, he kills them)

\- At the beginning of week 3, they get deployed to the continent of Levant to help out there, but they have to land on a Actium Navy carrier for fuel, which gets attacked and Zelda and his teammates are forced to abandon (in Zelda's case, again, as he did something similar in chapter 11) which doesn't help his guilt

\- The breaking point comes when UNSC forces are withdrawing to Cyprium, and Odessa is shot down

\- Later that night, he and Bellum are drinking in Odessa's honor when Zelda comes to the conclusion that they're not going to survive this battle, and that's there's only one way for them to escape.

 **("Yeah?" Bellum slurred. "What's that?"**

 **She looked up, only to see Zelda had pulled out his sidearm and was staring at it rather intensely. At once, Bellum sobered up.**

 **"Zelda…" she cautiously began as she started to climb to her feet. "What are you doing?"**

 **Zelda stared at her, tears gently rolling down his face.**

 **"Sorry, Major," he whispered. "But this is the only way out."**

 **He stuck the barrel in his mouth, cocked the hammer…**

 **"No, wait! _LINK -!"_**

 **…and pulled the trigger.**

 **At once a loud ringing ears filled his ears. Zelda was laying on the ground, but he didn't remember falling. Bellum was hovering over him, screaming something, but Zelda couldn't hear her. He tried to assure her that he was okay, that this what he wanted, but he found he couldn't speak. It didn't matter though: the world was spinning and the edges of his vision were starting to go dark. Where he was going, Zelda had no idea, but there was one thing he was certain of:**

 **He was free.)**

[Oh, Bellum would have been promoted at some point from Captain to Major. And the origins of their call signs would have been revealed at some point]

Bellum = "bellum" is Latin for "war." Her name is Katherine Pax. "Pax" is the Latin word for "peace," so her call sign is just a play on her name

Zelda = his name is "Link Kuang." Link is obviously the name of the protagonist from the Zelda series, so his call sign is also just a play on his name

…or so he believed. As it would have turned out, that's not why he was named Zelda. He was given that call sign because Zelda is a princess. And princesses live in high towers, sheltered lives and away from the "undesirables." So, Zelda's call sign is more an insult, a reference to his refusal/reluctance to interact with the rest of the squadron, and the general "I'm better than you" attitude Zelda always had already him.

Odessa = this call sign would have been revealed in the very last scene, when Zelda and Bellum are talking about his death. The name "Odessa" came about as a result of a prank the squadron pulled on Odessa. One day when he first joined the squadron, he got really drunk and brought a chick back with him to barracks. Problem was, he couldn't remember her name, only that she was from Odessa, Ukraine. The next morning, while Odessa was still passed out, the Odessan girl would sneak out, leaving Odessa alone so, as a joke, the rest of the squadron snuck a dog into Odessa's bed. As expected, when Odessa came to, the rest of the squadron spent the next hour convincing him that in his drunken state, he had fucking a dog, much to his own shame and disgust. (The squadron would of course later reveal to him what had actually happened, but not before Odessa had taken five showers and burned his sheets.) He would later get back at the squadron with an unspecified prank (what that prank was had been undecided,) though the call sign stuck.

Skeeter = kind of already revealed in chapter 36, but a "skeeter" is a southern United States slang word for "mosquito." Kind of like the pilot, the call sign indicates the rest of the squadron found Skeeter to be very annoying, like a mosquito.

JT = again, revealed already, but short for "JTAC," or "Joint Terminal Attack Controller," (i.e. a military term for someone who is qualified at directing combat aircraft engaged in close air support)

303 = this one was the least thought out, but it's supposed to be a reference to the No 303 Squadron of WW2 fame. The No 303 Squadron was a RAF fighter squadron consisting of free Polish pilots. Basically, 303 in this story would have claimed to be a descendant of one of those pilots.

Lastly for Zelda, after his suicide, in a bit of dark irony, it would be revealed that while Odessa had been shot down, contrary to what Zelda believed, Odessa had been able to successfully eject from his aircraft, and was actually recovered from the battlefield by Army soldiers, and would return to his unit a couple days after Zelda's death.

* * *

Gunner's Mate Amber Owain

Amber's story, I will fully admit, is definitely the cheesiest of all the characters. Like Marcus, it's sort of a "coming of age" story in the sense that it's about her learning about her own sexuality and she much prefers women over men. Basically, the premise is that her friend, Poolsie, has a crush on her and for a while now, only Amber hadn't realized it and had been friend zoning Poolsie for some time now. However, her relationship (or lack thereof) with Leporidae would help her figure that aspect out about her life.

So, the way I had imagine it in my mind, as mentioned in the outline above, the _Gabrielle_ would crash land onto Actium. After the crash but before their rescue, Poolsie would finally admit (which she had been trying for sometime,) she has been in love with Amber for quite some time and though she doesn't expect Amber to return the feeling, she just wanted her to know. At that point, Poolsie falls unconscious.

Later, after they'll been rescued, she'll find out because of the crash, Poolsie is now paralyzed from the waist down and is in a coma, leaving Amber to mull about Poolsie' words and what she wants to do (or if she even feels the same way.) She'll have a conversation with her aunt, Ducky (who, I didn't mention, but will have turned out to have been Selene's best friend, that one that prevented her from committing murder and getting her exiled instead of locked up) and Ducky would have pointed out that she always figured Amber was gay and not only that, Ducky's sister and Amber's other aunt, Megan (who was mentioned all the way back in chapter 1 and who would have known Poolsie as Poolsie mentions Megan was her favorite teacher) would have known about Poolsie's crush on Amber and was just waiting for Poolsie to find the courage to tell her (indicating that Poolsie had felt this way for a while now.)

Amber's story would have ended with her and Poolsie getting evacuated, and Amber deciding she does in fact return Poolsie's feelings and wants to move forward, no matter what. Unfortunately for her, there was supposed to have been subtle hints that Poolsie would actually die of her injuries, turning the story into a sort of tragedy.

\- It should be noted, unlike the rest of the characters, I actually have the least planned for Amber (which is why she only showed up in five of the first 35 chapters of book 1) so if a redux version does happen, Amber will more than likely be cut

* * *

Private First Class (later Lance Corporal) Adel Savaschi

Adel's story would have been very similar to Marcus' story, in the sense that it's all about him learning how to be a more effective Marine. Unlike Marcus though, Adel would be coming from the opposite end of the spectrum. Whereas Marcus needed to learn how to be more confident (and less of a coward,) Adel would have learned how to be more humble and accepting of other people.

Some things that would have happened to him:

\- We would have finally gotten Doc Westley's story, which I have been trying to include in a story since MIA (she's a pre-med student from Skopje who lost her scholarship after the Skopje government decided to divert most education funds towards the military budget. Unable to pay for school because her dad is poor-class mechanic, Westley enlisted in the Air Force to help pay the Bill's and gain some real world medical experience, only due to a series of unfortunate events, found herself getting assigned to an Army line unit in the middle of a Covenant invasion. Despite how good of a job she's doing, the experience has traumatized her so much, she no longer wants to be a doctor, and "no longer wants to treat another wounded person for the rest of her life," making this entire experience sort of a waste.

\- At some point, Lancelot would have been wounded, forcing his evacuation and allowing Silva to take over

\- At some point, the rest of the Army troopers and militiamen would have been rotated off the line and replaced by Marines

\- At some point, Reynolds would have been wounded, forcing his evacuation and leaving no one with the ability to keep Silva in check

\- At some point, Silva would have given some poor orders that would result in much of the company getting stuck in a house and cutoff from friendly forces forcing them to hold out against repeat Covenant attacks for a couple of days (kind of like Pavlov's House from WW2, or the American Lost Battalion during WW1, or the Lost Platoon during the Battle of la Drang during the Second Indochina War (Vietnam War for Americans)) before being recovered (this would probably have occurred in week 3)

\- We would have found out a little about Sam's backstory and why he's somewhat contemptuous of the Army: when he was fourteen, his colony was invade by the Covenant. In order to help out, he, his brother, and a number of classmates volunteered to act as stretcher bearers and what have you. The military unit they were assigned to though, a UNSC Army infantry Division, instead gave the kids their guns and had them hold back the Covenant while the actual soldiers fled. If not for the timely arrival of UNSC Marines, though not before Sam' brother was seriously injured and crippled for live. Still, San's life was saved and he decided right then and there he was going to be a Marine.

\- We would have found out about X's brother. I'm not sure how many readers noticed, but X shares the same last name as a character from my other story, _Missing in Action,_ "Xanthus," who sacrificed himself holding back the Covenant to allow Moss, Pip, and the Spartan to make it to the extraction Pelican. It would have been revealed that Xanthus is X's twin brother (the one who joined the Army and why X seems to know so much about the 222nd.) One thing would have let to another and somehow, Adel and his teammates would have come across Xanthus frozen corpse, still sitting the gunner's seat of the IFV he had used in his last stand. After that discovery, X's personality would have undergone a 180: he would have stopped dripping random quotations, he would have no longer been that bemused Marine but rather, a very angry person who just wants to see all the Covenant dead for what they did to his brother.

Adel's end would come in week 4. With the Covenant closing in from all directions, Adel and the rest of the Marines could tell the city was about to become a death trap, and that if anyone wanted to get out, now would be the time. Ultimately, Sam and Adel decided that X has to be the one to live, if only so he can be saved on an emotional level. X, consumed by hatred at that point, naturally doesn't want to go but Sam grabs X and Adel shoots him (X, that is) in the foot, wounding him and necessitating his evacuation.

X is furious, but then, Adel tells him "do not go gentle into that good night," which X recognizes as a quotation from Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. He demands to know how Adel knows that line and Adel reveals that he saved all of X's data pad containing his books of philosophy (which X had thrown away in a fit of rage,) and has been reading from them since, showing his growing maturity. Adel then reminds X of who he used to be, and points out that the best way to honor his brother is to be alive to remember him, and also admits that out of all of them, X was the only best of them all, which is why he needs to live. X finally relents and allows himself to be evacuated, crying as he watches his friends march off to their positions, knowing that this would be the last time he sees them.

Adel's final end would be a book end of how he was first introduced:

 **(The ground rattled and shook as the last of the explosions died off in the distance.**

 **So. It had come down to this. Just like he always knew it would. Lance Corporal Adel Savaschi glanced to his left, then to his right, looking over faces of his best friends in the world, doing his best to memorize them. Six hundred and fifty Marines had marched into combat; out of all of them, Adel had only ever gotten to know a handful of them, but it didn't matter as he would have laid his life down for each and every one of them, just like he knew they would do for him. After all, that was what being a Marine would about.**

 **Sacrifice.**

 **The whine of anti-gravity engines slowly began to fill the air and Adel quickly grabbed his rifle and started shooting. In the end, the end came faster than he expected. As the Covenant warriors began to walk across the shattered corpses of their enemies, Adel died with a smile on his face, surrounded by his brothers and sisters, and the best friends he had even known.)**

* * *

Sergeant (later Staff Sergeant) Tariq Helmand

As has been hinted already, Tariq's story would have revolved around some mysterious incident that occurred back on Draco III that has clearly left a number of people feeling guilty, including Tariq even if he won't admit it. Some things that would happen:

\- Tariq would continue to be nasty towards Corona, even though Corona has long proven himself to everyone else in the battalion

\- During week 2, the 53rd ABCT would be reflagged as the 53rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and as per part of that change, they would receive a bunch of replacements for this losses. Tariq would then be promoted to Staff Sergeant, given his own tank, and made a tank commander (while Corona would replace him as gunner on Lillian.)

\- As part of his new crew, Tariq would be assigned a new driver, fresh out of OSUT, who would know even less than Corona side yet, for some reason, Tariq proves to have more patience with him than Corona, proving to Corona that Tariq had a personal problem with Corona, and not because he was new.

\- At the start of week 3, in order to try and halt the Covenant breakout, Tariq and his regiment would be thrown in the part of the advancing Covenant army. There, I had planned a scene that would have been heavily based on the climatic battle from the 2014 movie _Fury_ (because, of course I would have) where Tariq and his crippled company are forced to try and hold back a seemingly endless horde of Covenant soldiers

= Ultimately, they would succeed only to find out the force they fought was a diversion, and that during the course of the battle, the real attack had been able to outflank and accomplish their objectives anyway

= Even worse, during the battle, Tariq's friend Chenko would be shot by a Spiker and he would last enough to ask Tariq if God would forgive them for what they did and Tariq, despite knowing what Chenko wanted to hear, would only be able to say "God abandoned the human race a long time ago."

\- We would have found out a bit more about Noble's backstory and why she seems a little incompetent: because she's actually 70 years old, had been out of the Army for years, was recalled to service with the promise she would only be a trainer, only for the Army to immediately go back on their word and assign her to an active duty line unit (due to a lack of qualified NCOs)

\- Also would reveal that the tank Lillian is actually named after her eldest granddaughter, who, along with her daughter-in-law (Lillian's mother,) was killed at the age of five by an Innie mortar round, and that her son (Lillian's father,) wasn't able to handle it and abandoned the family, leaving behind his three remaining children to be raised by Noble and her husband

\- At some in the middle of week 3 (maybe,) Noble would be wounded in action; while going to go pee, she would step on a mine that would blow her leg off, leaving her to be evacuated

\- In another battle, Tariq would lose his entire tank and crew to something (undecided) though he was able to survive because he was thrown from his commander's hatch (maybe the tank rolled over into a river and the rest of his crew was trapped.) Either way, Tariq would find himself back in the same tank with Corona, much to his visible anger

At any case, thing will come to a head and it would have been finally revealed that the thing that had been eating away at Tariq and the others: so, on Draco III (as per canon,) the Covenant were able to gather a large number of civilians who were then promptly eaten alive by Jackals and Grunts. It would be revealed that, in the closing days of the campaign, Tariq and the remainder of company had been escorting a number of civilians towards and evacuation zone. However, by the time they arrive, they find that there's not enough transports for both the civilians and the soldiers. With Covenant soldiers closing in, Tariq and his friends make the decision to abandon the civilians and save themselves, forcing the civilians back at gunpoint. Many of those civilians would eventually become part of the group that got eaten alive.

In an effort to save face, the Army would die their best to cover up the incident, transferring the survivors to different brigades, including Tariq's commander, then Lieutenant-Colonel Menteith (hence his words to Selene as mentioned above.)

The _real_ twist however, would be that, as it turns out, Corona _is_ from Draco III, and he actually knew some of people who were eaten. That's something Tariq knew about, which is why he's been treating Corona like shit: he sees Corona as the ghost of Draco III, a physical manifestation of his guilt, reminding him every day of what he did.

Corona is of course, pissed, and at this point, between here and week 5, I wasn't sure of what else was going to happen, only that at some point after week 5, Tariq finds himself in a position where it's almost exact same scenario as Draco III, only this time Tariq chooses to do the right thing and sacrifices himself to allow the civilians to escape. Before he does, Corona is able to forgive him, and Tariq is able to earn his redemption.

* * *

 **Covenant Characters**

Lepidus

So, for Lepidus here, there wasn't really a "arc" per say in the same way as the characters above. His role in the story was supposed to give me a chance to delve into the Covenant perspective of the battle, as well as the behind the scenes politics of the Covenant Empire. One big thing I want to show was that Lepidus is a bit of an innovator, and would be one of the primary forces behind shifting the way the Covenant military approaches ground warfare, changing it from "ground forces are just there to supporting the fleet" to "ground forces should be their own thing." I think I've mentioned this before in one of my stories, but I always saw the Elites as being the "Marines" of the Covenant military, and the Brutes being the actual "Army" of the Covenant (so, basically, the difference between an expeditionary force vs a long term fighting force.) Lepidus' tactics wouldn't be particularly innovative (and, in fact, to a human's eyes they would actually be pretty basic,) but I imagined Lepidus as being able to innovate the Covenant military in a similar way to how Marshal Zhukov was able to reshape the Red Army into the juggernaut they would become after the disastrous first couple years of WW2 (or, kind of like how Patton helped to revitalize the US Army after their extremely poor performance un the wake of the Battle of Kasserine Pass.)

The big thing with Lepidus wouldn't really occur until towards the end of the story. So, as kind of a small subplot, Lepidus would have spent much of the battle wondering why he, out of all the other Brute commanders, had been put in charge of such a large battle. But it wouldn't be until the end of the battle would he finally figure out that answer.

This scene would have taken place at the end of week4/beginning of week 5. Menteith has just made his last stand and Lepidus' original landing sites have all been destroyed. Even though by now the landing sites serve very little purpose (as the battle lines had long moved too far away for the sites to support them,) the landing sites had been the location of where the Covenant's first factories had been set up (where they would have started mining and refining the iron ore needed to repair their ships. The factories would have also started cleaning up the battlefields, salvaging what weapons and materials they could, and scrapping what they couldn't to reprocess later.) So, those factories, combined with the nukes, would have thrown so much population into the air, the planet is essentially wrecked.

At any case, Lepidus is in a meeting with the Hierarchs. He's nervous because he knows while the humans have been defeated, their last minute "fuck you" has meant their battle was a strategic defeat for the Covenant (as now the planet can't be used to repair their supply lines.) As the commander in charge, Lepidus full expects to take the blame. However, much to his surprise, the Hierarchs are fully and instantly ready to lay the blame of the defeat at the feet of 'Oteree, for "not securing the northern flank as he was tasked."

Lepidus is of course grateful, but confused: why would the Hierarchs want to do this? Then he sees Tartarus enter the meeting and everything becomes clear.

Throughout the course of the story, it would have been made clear Lepidus and Tartarus do not see eye to eye: Lepidus is concerned about making the Brutes the dominant force in the galaxy, and he sees the Covenant merely as a stepping stone to accomplishing that goal (which is why he even bothers paying them lip service.) On the other hand, Tartarus honestly believes the Covenant (specifically the Hierarchs,) are truly allies of the Brutes and only through their help will the Brutes be able to be the dominant force in the galaxy. Both Chieftains are powerful and fairly popular among their kind, to the point either one could ascend to power and have the support of the majority of their kind, and the only reason why Tartarus is in charge is because Lepidus knows Tartarus has the support of the Covenant, and Lepidus knows the Brutes are no where near strong enough to make enemies of the Covenant, so he's willing to tolerate Tartarus' role as Chieftain for now.

Unfortunately for Lepidus, this was something the Hierarchs were able to pick up on, and between the two Brutes, they would much rather have Tartarus in charge (because he's more malleable.) The problem is, they just can't kill Lepidus and remove him from the equation (as they could potentially trigger a civil war among the Brutes, and the Hierarchs need the Brutes strong in order to act as a balancing force to the Elites,) so they made a deal with Tartarus: if Tartarus were to swear absolute fealty to the Hierarchs, the Hierarchs would remove Lepidus as a potential rival to him.

So, as part of their plan, they promote Lepidus into a position he's probably not really ready for, and wait for him to fuck up, which he does. The reason why their so readily willing to exonerate Lepidus is twofold: one, by putting all the blame on an Elite as opposed to a Brute, it strengths the Brutes in the eyes of the rest of the Covenant and makes the Elites that much weaker. And two: it forces Lepidus to keep in line because if Lepidus doesn't do exactly what the Hierarchs want him to do, then it will just be a simple matter to reveal the truth of what happened on Actium and thoroughly discredit him.

Lepidus' part in the story would have ended with him bitterly wondering how he managed to get so thoroughly outmaneuvered, and what his future will now hold now that's he's no longer useful to the Hierarchs.

* * *

'Oteree

'Oteree's arc would have involved him becoming more and more cynical as the battle continues. Basically, 'Oteree is a military man through and through, and not a politician, but unfortunately it would have been shown that in the Covenant Empire, both are so intertwined, you can't really be one without the other. Because of that, throughout the entire battle, 'Oteree is shown to be growing increasingly cynical about his role in the war as Lepidus does things that militarily don't make sense, but it makes sense if you're trying to get a leg up over your rival (like force 'Oteree and the rest of the Elites to fight an unsupported battle against UNSC Marines in some of the worst terrain possible: a heavily built up city. Or wage a war with the ground forces as the primary element of the battle as opposed to the fleet, thus minimizing the effect the Elite dominated navy has on the other all conflict.)

Adding to 'Oteree's disenchantment is the fact that all his complaints about how the battle is being run goes nowhere: the Hierarchs won't talk or even listen to him anymore, and even his own kind is more concerned about having 'Oteree "do his duty," "make the Sangheili race proud," and "if necessary, die with honor." All this talk makes him realize one truth: no one in the Covenant High Council actually cares about the war against the humans, it's just a sideshow to the real conflict, the one between the Elites and the Brutes and who will have the stronger influence on the Covenant. And that makes 'Oteree question what all his troops are dying for, and what all his many years of service and sacrifice were for.

(Note: all this is roughly based on how Imperial Japan was during WW2, with the Army and Navy seemingly more concerned about gaining leverage over each other, as opposed to winning the fight against the Americans.)

In the end, after the nukes go off, 'Oteree can tell he's going to be taking the blame for all this. And because of that, everyone pretty much tells him he needs to commit suicide in order to save the honor and face of the entire Elite race (so much that 'Oteree's former mentor, 'Breshkee would send a hit team to "assist" 'Oteree in his suicide.) Of course, at this point, 'Oteree has gotten so cynical and disgusted with the Covenant (and his own people) as a whole, he's no longer interested in playing these games and obeying the society rules.

Ending scene with 'Oteree would have consisted of 'Breshkee's hit team entering 'Oteree's quarters, follow by a cut where Lepidus (or maybe 'Quetshadee; had not decided whether he would have survived to this point. I think the scene would serve better with 'Quetshadee though, showing that not even 'Oteree's friends were really his friends,) getting informed that 'Breshkee's team's Phantom is leaving the ship and headed for slipspace. Whomever the listener would have been (Lepidus or Quetshadee) would have then gone to Oteree's quarters to oversee the cleaning of the mess, only instead of one Elite body, they would find three.

Scene would then cut to the inside of the Phantom, showing Oteree, wounded but alive, and then it would be revealed that rather than chose to accept his death, 'Oteree has chosen to abandon the Covenant Empire and is setting out to find his own path in the galaxy (and thus setting him up for a potential Mass Effect/Halo crossover story I had in mind…)

* * *

Zek

Lastly, Zek. Zek's story would have kind of been the opposite of 'Oteree's. As the guy on the ground, Zek would not have knowledge of all the crap and political play that would be going on behind the scenes. All he would know is that for the first four weeks of the battle, he and his comrades would see non-stop conflict (because, for the warrior race like the Elites and the Brutes, "battle fatigue" and "PTSD" are just different names for "cowardice," and that there's no way a Covenant warrior, especially one of the lesser races, would ever be allowed off the battlefield expect for severe injury or death.)

At any case, Zek would surely see his friends die off, one by one, and he would really only have one place to direct his anger: the humans. As the story dragged on, Zek would steadily become more vicious and rabid towards the humans, more fanatical and devoted, to the point even his Elite commanders are starting to be concerned about him, so they decide to shuffle him to the factories to try and cool off.

A couple days after he's starting in the factories, that's when Menteith makes his break out attempt. Due to most of the Covenant Army having been deployed to the far south (because that's where the battle lines are,) and because the Elites never expected the humans to attack, Menteith is able to make it all the way to the landing sites, forcing Zek to pick up a weapon and go fight.

Ultimately, Zek is the one who is able to mortally wound Menteith (I'm thinking Menteith would have been transporting the Havoks aboard an Elephant, under his personal protection, but Zek was able to get onboard and close enough to wound Menteith.)

 **("Zek sneered as the human fell, smoke hole in his back. Lowering his pistol, he approached the human, his mouth beginning to saliva already. He would be eating well tonight.**

 **Grabbing the human, Zek turned him over, wanting to see the fear in the human's eye as he saw death approaching. What Zek saw instead, however, confused him. The human was… laughing?**

 **"What is so funny, human?" Zek angrily demanded to know, infuriated by the human's lack of fear.**

 **The human said something in response, but Zek didn't understand human, something the human clearly realized because, instead, the human turned his hand. At first, Zek tensed, as he thought the human had a weapon, but upon closer inspection, it was merely a small device that seemed to consist solely of a large red button.**

 **A clicking noise caught Zek's attention and he glanced at the human to see the creature waving at him, trying to attract his attention. The human pointed at something behind Zek, and despite himself, Zek turned around. There, mounted on the wall, was a small cylindrical object that he had somehow missed the first time when he had entered this vessel. At first, Zek couldn't figure out what the device was, but then he suddenly remembered something. Cycles ago. When the battle first begun. Zek had been aboard the _Hammer of Justice_ when the Demons had invaded. And they had left behind a similar device. A device that had –**

 **Zek's pistol clattered to the ground as it slipped out of his numb claws.**

 **"Voi pas…" he started to say. Then the human pressed the button -**

 **\- and the world turned white.")**

* * *

 **Conclusion**

So, yeah, as you guys can see, I had a lot of things planned for this story. Looking at this outline, then using the amount of chapters and words I had for book 1, I was legit looking at a story that probably would have been a hundred plus chapters, and probably a million and a half words, which is ridiculously long for a professional story, much less a fanfiction. Cuts had and have to be made somewhere (because there's no freaking way I'm writing a story like this.) Obvious solution would be to simply cut the cast in half (as mentioned earlier, Selene and Amber are the mostly likely cuts, but I'm also thinking either Marcus or Adel should go, probably Adel as the Marine Corps shows up all the time in Halo media whereas the Colonial Militia haven't, thus giving me more room to work either,) but the other solution would be that I need to pace myself better, as well as maintain focus on the overall picture instead of allowing myself to divulge in depicting every single firefight that may or many not occur during the battle. Another thing I need to work on is realizing that I don't need to have equal screen time for all of my characters, that is okay for some characters to show up more often than others (like I did at the beginning of the story, with Amber outright disappearing after chapter 11.)

Other than that, some more minor changes I would need to make, I think, is abandon the idea of making a "realistic story" (especially the dogfighting scenes; been doing a little research and I have come to the conclusion I don't have any idea how modern "dogfights" would go, if at all; need to stick with pure Hollywood tactics.) Other thing I would probably need to do is just flat out admit this story is AU, because it's not canon compliant in the _least_ bit (there always feels like a fine line between "expanding on canon" and "changing canon," and I think I crossed that line a long time ago, I just have been refusing to admit it.)

So, yeah, that's that. Maybe I'll revisit this story in a couple of months, maybe I'll do something else entirely. Not sure yet. If anyone has any comments or suggestions or ideas, feel free to leave me a review or a message. Either way, I appreciate all support everyone has shown me in the last few years.

Bye.


End file.
